Into The Fire (The Ending Series) (35 page)

I moved toward the shower curtain and reached out to pull it
aside. “I’m not trying to be stalkerish or anything, but you didn’t answer and please
don’t be mad at me for invading your privacy, but—”

The shower was empty. And the window was open.

“Shit.”

Less than fifteen minutes later, I’d changed, stuffed the
little camera in my jeans pocket, and dragged Gabe to work early, parting ways
with him just down the hall from Dr. Wesley’s office. I was fairly certain that
was where Mase had run off to. Before heading up to his lab, Gabe warned me
that my dose of the neutralizer would have worn off already as well—it tended
to last only four or five days—and told me to be
very
careful about who
I spoke to and what I said.

I entered Dr. Wesley’s office without knocking. Unsurprisingly,
Mase was standing in the middle of the room, his back to me. He glanced over
his shoulder as I walked in, and I raised my eyebrows irritably.

“Sorry,” he mouthed, and his eyes held such desperation that
I couldn’t stay annoyed.

He just wants to understand.
I approached him and
reached up to pat his shoulder, letting him know we were okay. We would have a
chat later, but we were okay.

“I assume you’re here for the same reason as Mase,” Dr.
Wesley said. Again, she was sitting in the chair behind her desk.

I just smiled and tugged her key from the neck of my shirt.
It only took me a few seconds to remove it and the guard’s key from the cord.
“Thanks. As it turned out, I didn’t actually need this,” I said, setting both keys
on her desk with a thunk. Once I was gone, I wouldn’t have a use for either of
them.

The doctor returned my humorless smile, and I had to remind
myself that her resemblance to Zoe didn’t mean I had to like her. “Had you told
me who would be with you, I would’ve informed you that any key was
superfluous.”

So she knew Camille could pick pretty much any lock.
I
guess that’s not surprising.
“Camille told you about our late-night fun.”

Dr. Wesley frowned the barest amount. “No, she didn’t. I
haven’t seen her since yesterday.” She motioned toward Mase with her chin. “He
filled me in, a bit. At least, when he wasn’t making demands.”

I sighed. I could only imagine how Mase’s anxiety and
unsquashable protectiveness of Camille had manifested while he’d been trying to
get the rest of the story from Dr. Wesley. She had, after all, been the person responsible
for Camille’s death and rebirth via the Re-gen process. I doubted
that
was something Mase would easily forgive. At least, not without proper
motivation…like the truth.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why, Danielle? I think ‘why’ must be your favorite word.”

Laughing softly, bitterly, I shook my head and closed the
final few feet to her desk. I pointed my right hand back toward Mase without
breaking eye contact with Dr. Wesley. “Don’t you get it? He’s in pain. He’s heartsick
because of something you had your hands in—or,
another
thing you had
your hands in—and you have the information that might make him feel better. But
no, you’re holding out.” I dropped my arm and glowered at her. “Your kids would
be ashamed of you. Zo always said she thought her dad’s oddities were caused by
a broken heart, though she used to think it was because he’d lost the love of
his life in a tragic car wreck, not that it matters now.”

I expected her eyes to flash with rage, but hurt was all
that filled their jewel-blue depths. Whatever her faults, Dr. Wesley loved her
family. Unfortunately for humanity, she loved them too much.

“He was a good man,” I added softly. “I never knew my dad,
and I always considered Tom to be sort of my surrogate father. But he
was
heartbroken.
He wasn’t right in the head, not completely.” Briefly, I glanced back at Mase
and then returned my eyes to the doctor’s. “
He
doesn’t have to go
through the same thing. You can help him understand why Camille did what she
did. You’re
the only one who can do that.”

Dr. Wesley’s features tensed, turning the planes and angles
of her face more severe, but then her expression softened. She sighed, a long,
drawn-out exhalation of breath and emotion. It was a sound of letting go. Her
eyes shifted to Mase, and she began to explain. “Camille came here…she came
here for revenge, and although you might not agree, she was lucky that I
intercepted her before
Gregory learned of her. I know you read her
backstory from her file. Well, it’s not completely…complete.”

Her brow furrowed in thought. “Let’s see…if I remember
correctly, Camille’s mother was a nurse, and she noticed a correlation between
the people she’d administered a certain batch of flu vaccine to and the first
victims of the epidemic in her area—some part of Minneapolis, I believe.” Dr.
Wesley waved her hand in front of her dismissively. “It was the same in every
large city. Mrs. Lin noticed the correlation and suspected it wasn’t a
coincidence. She checked the batch number and unusual place of origin, and made
a complaint to the CDC. They told her they would take care of it—which was a
lie, as they were already under Gregory’s control. He’s always been very
strategic. His Ability can be expended, you know, so he has to be selective
about who he controls.”

Dr. Wesley paused for a moment, her gaze flicking back and
forth between us. “Mrs. Lin fell ill soon after and died quite quickly, but not
before she told her daughter to
never
go to Peterson Air Force Base in
Colorado, that the base was where the faulty vaccines had originated. The rest
of her story plays out much as you read it”—she waved her hand in Mase’s
direction—“with Mase’s father attacking her, Camille killing him, and
eventually her ending up in the car with the woman headed straight for the one
place her mother begged her to never go. She was looking for answers.”

Suddenly, exhaustion filled the doctor’s face, along with
wariness verging on fear. “I found her crying in a corner of the hospital
shortly after her admittance exam. She’d spotted you, Mase, and couldn’t face
you knowing what she’d done. She spilled her whole story to me, along with her
knowledge of the false vaccine, and in turn, I informed her that spreading such
a tale here would mean certain death for her. She was so hysterical that I
wasn’t surprised when she said she would rather die than keep living with the
knowledge of what she’d done. She was just so miserable…so I told her there was
another option.” The doctor’s eyes turned pleading. “I know you think me
heartless, but I could see it written across her face: the girl would’ve killed
herself before the day was over. She’d given up.”

“So you killed her and brought her back to life as your own
puppet instead of Herodson’s?” I clarified harshly.

Dr. Wesley shook her head, telling me she’d known I wouldn’t
understand. “I told her I could transform her, end her current, pain-filled life
and give her another one. I told her I could help her avenge her mother’s
death. I told her the truth, and
she
believed me.” The way Dr. Wesley said
“she” told me Camille had believed her in a way she knew I never would, and
that she appreciated Camille for her openness. “We started the process the
evening of her arrival, and she was reborn the following day.”

“And me?” Mase asked. “Before she was remade, did she know
you were going to make me into a Re-gen, too?”

“What?” the doctor looked taken aback. “Of course not. The
original Camille had no idea of what would happen to you. That was…that was
partially my fault, and partially yours. Your letter was also not quite the
truth. You see, you were using the neutralizer, like Dani. You were one of the
first who was truly awake, truly free of Gregory’s control, even before
Gabriel.”

For some reason, the revelation shocked me.
The original
Mase had used the neutralizer like Gabe and me? Did Gabe
know
Mase
before—the original Mase, as Dr. Wesley would have said? If so, why didn’t he
tell me?

“Unfortunately for you, that freedom of mind led to your
downfall. But that’s where my fault comes in as well. Gregory believes me to be
under his control completely”—her lips twisted into an ugly sneer—“but he
commands me to behave as though I am not, wanting to give his fantasy more
reality. This means I must give in sometimes to lend credence to my ruse. When your
susceptibility to his mind control came into question, he asked his advisors,
including me, for ideas on how to test your loyalty. I suggested he use
Camille, a young woman who’d recently become a Re-gen, who you just happened to
have a close connection with growing up. Gregory thought it was the perfect
idea. He used Camille to prove your disloyalty, and the rest is history.”

I could do nothing else but stare at her, dumbfounded. The
whole situation was a mind-boggling, convoluted mess of coincidence and bad
luck.

“Just when I think I’ve dug as deep as I can, I sink the
shovel in again and make the hole deeper,” Dr. Wesley said softly. “You must
hate me even more now.”

But before I could answer, before I even knew
how
I
would’ve answered, I sensed Camille’s mind signature. She was walking down the
hallway leading to Dr. Wesley’s office. I grinned and peeked over my shoulder at
Mase. “Camille’ll be here in five, four, three—” Suddenly, I noticed five other
minds moving along with hers, and my grin withered. One of those minds belonged
to General Herodson.

“
He’s
with her,” I hissed, my eyes wide.
What did
he find out from Camille?
I looked from Mase to Dr. Wesley and back. “What
do we—”

The door swung open. Apparently, like me, General Herodson
hadn’t felt the need to knock. “My darling Anna, I hope I’m not interrupting
anything important.”

Simultaneously, Mase and I turned to face the newcomers.
General Herodson, dressed exactly as he’d been the first and only other time
I’d met him, in a dark blue officer’s uniform, stood behind two guards, both
male, both wearing yellow armbands, and both armed to the teeth. When the
guards stepped aside to flank the doorway, Camille came into view. She had a
black eye, a fat lip, and seemed to be favoring one of her legs.

“Oh my God, Camille! Are you okay? What happened?”
I
asked her silently, terrified both for her and for me.

Images flashed through my mind, and I was only partially
grateful for her adeptness at communicating with me in the odd, Re-gen form of
telepathy. What she showed me was stomach-churning.

Camille sobbing as she ran back into a room with row
after row of bunks.

A guard catching Camille by the arms and asking her something.

Camille lying on the floor, unconscious.

Camille, waking up tied to a plastic chair with plastic
restraints in a room stripped of all metal.

A small child—a girl—strapped to another chair directly
in front of her, crying.

A guard, hitting the child.

Camille mouthing, “I’m sorry.”

My heart raced. General Herodson, in all his perverseness,
had threatened Camille with the well-being of a little girl in exchange for
information. I knew his manipulative Ability didn’t work the same on Re-gens as
it did on what Mase and Camille called “normals,” but I hadn’t guessed the
heinous alternatives the General would use to get his way. I should have.

Oh God…what did she tell them? What
could
she have
told him?
Frantically, I searched through my memory for every interaction
I’d had with Camille. Had I told her anything about Jason and Zoe? What did she
know, besides enough information to damn Gabe, Mase, Dr. Wesley, and me?

“Gabe,”
I said silently, reaching out to my friend’s
mind. He was still upstairs in his lab.
“They know. Get out. Get out now!”

“Are you okay?”

“Probably not, but don’t you dare come down here.”

“Dani—”

“I mean it, Gabe! If you care about me at all, get
somewhere safe
right now
!”

“Danielle O’Connor. My new communications specialist,”
General Herodson said. He was trim, slightly handsome, and easily the evilest
person I’d ever met. He blew Mandy right out of the water, if only for the
sheer scale of what he’d done. Why did the mind-manipulation Ability turn
people into the worst versions of themselves? “What are you doing here, my dear?”

Adjusting my telepathic aim, I found Jason almost instantly.
My heart sank. He—all of them—were still at their camp, over fifty miles
southwest of the Colony.
“Jason,”
I said to him alone.
“Don’t panic,
but we need to hurry things up a bit.”

“Dani?”
he responded, sounding furious.
“What are
you saying? Are you in trouble? Are you hurt?”

General Herodson asked what I’m doing here…right.
I
pulled the cord over my neck, glad I’d already removed the keys, and held the red
card proclaiming my health status as “not suited for work.” I forced a smile,
trying my hardest to make it appear genuine, and said, “I was just returning
this. My sleep wasn’t at all disturbed by my headache last night, so I figured
I’d start work today.”

“I’m fine for the moment, but I think they know,”
I
mind-spoke to Jason.

“Tell me what’s happening,”
he demanded.

“Lie,” a woman said from behind the General. Like the
guards, she was wearing fatigues, but she didn’t appear to be armed.

Silently, I told Jason,
“Oh yeah, they know.”

“Fucking…fuck! Okay, listen. We’re about to leave. We’ll
be waiting for you by the pond at the southern tip of the golf course south of
the base. Carlos will signal our arrival and provide a distraction.”