Accused (Ganzfield) (4 page)

—And if she’s somehow human, she won’t feel a thing.

I went clammy and quivered like a cornered rabbit.
Oh, Trevor! Please hurry!

We pulled up to the loading dock at the back of a hospital in South Boston. I could feel it from out here—the pain of people wracked with cancer; people with gunshot wounds; people smashed up in car crashes. Their agony ate at the edges of my mind. Hunter went in and returned a few minutes later; he had arranged for a place in hell’s waiting room just for me.

The guards opened the door and pulled me from the bus. The rancid dumpster odor of summer garbage hit me, and it seemed the perfect match to the roaring agony that grew louder with every step. My heart seemed to be made of lead as it whacked against the inside of my chest.

Hunter watched me.
Are the files right? Will being around so many people in pain really affect her?

I felt the blood drain from my face. I closed my eyes and tried to think of other things to keep the pain and fear from showing. Where was Trevor now? Had he contacted Coleman? My jaw started to tremble and I swallowed hard.

Hunter lit up with savage pleasure.
Yes! I think this is going to work.
“Double guards on her room and constant video surveillance. Keep her in restraints. She’s more dangerous than she looks.”

I bit my lip to hold back the growing scream inside me as the guards dragged me deeper into this house of pain. My body shook through endless hallways—sickly green with neon—and into a glacially slow elevator. Someone buzzed us in through a set of double-doors—like an airlock—onto the locked ward, a mini-prison inside the hospital.

I bit my tongue and squeezed my eyes tightly shut as bullet and knife wounds scraped my mind raw. Liquid fire poured through me from the drug addicts in withdrawal. I felt every excruciating detail of their pain—of
everyone’s pain. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move. Needles of white energy stabbed through my eyelids—little splinters of light. When I closed my eyes, I still saw them.

The guards shackled me to a bedframe. I curled my legs up to my chest, as though becoming smaller and denser would hold in all of the pain. Tears streamed down from the corners of my eyes and got lost in my hair. I tried to focus on the feel of the tears, and then tried to filter my thoughts through the minds of the overworked nurses on the ward. Two of them came in after I’d been there for half of eternity. I was horrified to discover it had only been three hours. They stripped me down and dressed me in a paper-thin hospital gown. I barely noticed.

I didn’t sleep that night, or the next day, or the night afterward. As patients began to recover, they were moved from the ward. New patients with fresh, undiluted pain took their places. The ones on sedatives slept, leaving me with the constant input from the people who were in too much agony to sleep.

I felt like someone had sucked my soul out with a straw. After a day that felt like a decade, faceless strangers placed me in a wheelchair. Handcuffs bound my wrists to the tubular metal arms of the chair. Twisting hallways and slow elevators seemed to churn in a nightmarescape around me before a sudden burst of bright sun made me squint. The most intense pain was far enough away that I could breathe again, but I was too drained to scream.

Colonel Hunter stood, bull-like, at the edge of the cement surface of the loading dock. At his side, a guard pointed a hand-held video camera at me. Hunter evaluated my condition with a critical eye and I felt his thoughts scrape against my bruised consciousness.
Too bad we apprehended her on a Saturday. I would’ve liked to start interrogations yesterday.
But Sunday was his day of rest and Paul Hunter believed in God. Furthermore, Paul Hunter’s personal God agreed with Paul Hunter on just about everything—including the intrinsic worthlessness of those he didn’t classify as human.

Like me.

Hunter grabbed my chin, forcing my face up so he could see it. My hair swung back from my face, greasy and knotted with dried sweat and tears.
I think it’s working. She’ll break soon. Maybe right away.

“What did you do to those boys in New Jersey?” His fingers dug into my face, but that was nothing compared to the pain upstairs on the ward. “Talk. Now. Or I’ll send you back up to the locked ward for another day.”

Where’s Trevor Laurence?
I put the thought into his head, but my pain-rattled touch wasn’t as light as it usually was. He jerked back from me as though I’d given him an electric shock. My head drooped again and I closed my eyes in relief. Hunter didn’t have Trevor. His concern about a lawyer who was filing all sorts of motions on my behalf rippled through his thoughts—sounded like Coleman was finally on the case.

Trevor was safe. I tried to form a little prayer of gratitude, but nothing more than “Thank You, God” came to me. I figured that was probably enough.

When Hunter realized I wasn’t talking, he motioned to the guards and they rolled me back into screaming agony for another day. I couldn’t think; couldn’t breathe; couldn’t sleep; couldn’t move. Every muscle in my body contracted into a tight little ball once again.

A nurse came and cleaned me up a bit. Her mind and hands were gentle and kind, and her physical contact lessened the surrounding pain.
I’m worried about this girl.
She held the straw from the water glass to my lips.
She’s not getting better. She’s not getting any treatment. The chart lists her name as “Jane Doe” and it’s almost completely blank. And those scary government types are keeping her under special surveillance. Something’s very wrong here.

I focused into her thoughts, trying use a lighter touch this time than I had with Hunter.
I should ask my supervisor to look into this.

The full force of the pain returned when she left the room and I sank back into searing agony. The light coming through the window grate had shifted by the time the nurse returned with an older woman. I met her gaze with bleary eyes and tried to look help-worthy.

She frowned as she took in the situation.

Pitiful.

I let my head fall back.

Close enough.

Less than an hour after, guards handcuffed me into the wheelchair. Back on the loading dock, Hunter’s anxiety and anger flared like a grey lion’s mane around him.
I have to move her immediately, before those damned nurses cause any more trouble and someone figures out I’m keeping her here.

I felt myself lifted into the short bus. My face relaxed from its grimace, which made my cheeks feel like they were sagging off my skull. The bars on the windows sliced through the daylight. As we began to move away from the hospital, the last of the pain lifted and, even with hundreds of minds pressing in on mine, I fell into the dreamless sleep of the dead.

CHAPTER 3

Where the heck am I now?

There were no windows in the small, cube-shaped room, other than a thick little piece of glass in the door at face height. I took in the grey cinderblock walls and the concrete floor. A metal sink and toilet squatted in the corner. Fluorescent lights glared from panels in the ceiling. Two video cameras mocked me with their blinking little red lights in the upper corners of the room, protected behind thick triangles of clear plastic.

Big Brother’s watching.

I couldn’t hear any thoughts. How long had I been out? Hours? Days? Long enough for my last shot of dodecamine to’ve worn off? I’d had a booster the day before Trevor and I had gone to the airport. That felt like another lifetime ago. I sank back onto the narrow shelf bed with a groan.

Trevor. Where was he? Was he okay? I wanted a connection to him, but “wish you were here” didn’t exactly cover it.

Where was here, anyway?

I sat up. My aching muscles felt like I’d been running marathons—or been hit by a train. At least they were no longer clenched against the pain of the ward. I rubbed the back of my neck, noting that I was still in the papery hospital gown. I felt weak—like I hadn’t eaten anything in days.

As if on cue, I felt someone coming toward me.

Just take her the food now that she’s awake. No contact with the prisoner.

The single mind came through clearly—which meant I still had my ability. The guard was young, maybe in her early twenties. Through her vision, I surveyed the hall outside this cell. The only access point was a set of stairs behind her, leading up. Were we underground? Five doors lined each side of the hall ahead of her. I was behind the last one on the right—the only inmate of the facility. What was this place used for when they weren’t detaining teenage telepaths?

I floated little thoughts into the guard’s mind. I picked up that I’d been here—in this secret, underground facility near Bangor, Maine—for almost an entire day. The guard had seen me wake on her monitor. A tray slid through a little slot at the base of the door and I cringed as I remembered shoving food through a similar slot in the Blake House basement.

Being on this side of the locked door sucked.

The food was low-grade cafeteria fare—congealing globs of semi-identifiable goo—but I sat on the metal shelf of a bed and inhaled it.
It’s better if I don’t stop to taste it.
By the time I pulled my head out of the trough, I was alone again in the facility. Wherever the guard had gone, she was out of my range.

The food hit, filling me with a warmth and clarity that’d been lacking. I lay back and started doing some mental calculations. My last dose of dodecamine had been on Friday. The airport thing had been Saturday. I might’ve been three days in that hellish hospital ward—somewhere between three days and forever. Gah! The mere thought of the place made my hands clammy.
Another day here, sleeping off my pain hangover.
Was today Wednesday? That meant it’d been five days since my last shot. I’d only been off the drug once, when I’d woken from a nine-day coma. That time, about two weeks had passed between doses and my ability had been completely gone. So, four to nine days from now, I’d lose my ability.

If I’m going to do something, I have only a few days to do it. What are they planning to do with me?

Was this the “undisclosed location” from Hunter’s mind? Probably. There was a pretty good chance the Ganzfield RVs knew where I was. Rick was still there and he could track my location. He’d probably located me while I’d been in the hospital in Boston. They might get Claire to come up from Connecticut and get her close enough to visualize me. If I were back at Ganzfield and someone else was detained, that’s what I’d do, since Rachel was still off the meds until the baby was born.

Rachel. How was she doing? The pregnancy had been draining her. My mom must be a twitchy ball of worry. Williamson probably knew what being in that hospital had been like for a minder. I hoped he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else.

I saved thinking of Trevor for last, knowing that once I started thinking about him, I’d stick with it.

Trevor.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, imagining his arms around me. I inhaled the woodsy, phantom-scent of his skin. I felt his thoughts intertwine with mine and my skin warmed as I recalled connecting with him as pure energy.

But he’s not here. I’m all alone… and locked underground… like being buried alive.
I wrapped my arms tightly around myself as I drew in a sobbing breath. Part of my soul was missing. At least I had the luxury of knowing Trevor was safe. It must be worse for him, since I wasn’t safe. How was he handling this?

Would he do something crazy—like try to rescue me? He probably wanted to, but hopefully someone had talked him out of it. I was being held underground in a secret federal facility. Coleman was my best chance of getting out, at least in a way that didn’t involve my picture ending up on the post office wall. I felt a tiny smile tug at the corners of my mouth—whatever Coleman was doing was annoying Colonel Hunter. That sounded pretty promising.

The smile dribbled away as I felt the thick anger in Colonel Hunter’s approach. He used a key to enter the nondescript equipment shed that covered the entrance to this underground place. After jogging down a narrow set of stairs, he opened a double set of soundproofed doors above the stairwell that led to this row of cells. The first door required a keycode, which I lifted from Hunter’s mind without even trying. 1-0-7-9-2-4. Ten, seventy-nine, twenty-four. I chunked them like a locker combination and committed them to memory as though my life might depend on it.

Things like that had worked for me before.

The second door required a key card swipe and a fingerprint scan.

Crap.

My breath rushed out of me in a defeated huff. I might be able to snag a key card, but I was pretty sure Colonel Hunter would notice if I stole his finger.

I pulled myself up to sit against the far wall as he closed the door behind him. His eyes glanced at the two cameras in opposite corners of the room.
She’s recovered enough to answer questions.

My racing heart threatened to burst out of my chest. I felt exposed, alone in this room with him, dressed only in this stupid hospital gown. Apparently, after five days of flop-sweat without a shower, I’d also started to smell. Hunter’s mind and lip both curled with disgust.

“How did you kill those boys in New Jersey?”

I met his cold gaze with narrowed eyes and I felt my own lip curl. Hell, I could show him right now.

Just blast the crap out of his mind.

I didn’t have to touch him. I didn’t even have to move. This small cell was only about eight feet square. I could do it. I could kill him right here. What would the cameras show? Just that he’d had a massive stroke.

Except the stroke would be like the ones that’d killed Del and his friends…

I could fry Hunter, but that wouldn’t put an end to this mess. There were others now who knew about us. If I killed a military officer—even one as twisted and wrong as Colonel Hunter—it could bring down the hammer on all of Ganzfield.