New Sight (10 page)

“Any day now would be nice,” Inez said, her arms folded across her stomach.

Brady grabbed Mark and they set off down the new tunnel. More fliers swam on top of the almost-knee-deep water. The angle of the floor sloped downward, and Lys felt herself grabbing onto Kamau’s hand for stability. Part of her hated depending on him—she still didn’t know why he had been in the basement of the hospital—but the other part smiled.

“How far down are we going?” Brady asked. The light gradually diminished, and soon even Lys had a hard time seeing much.

Peter didn’t answer right way, but Lys saw him stop. “We’re here.”

A moment later a bright light filled the tunnel, causing Lys to flinch back, blinking her eye.

“Hey,” Brady protested. “Easy with that thing.”

The beam came from a flashlight mounted to the stone wall with rusty wire. It hit Brady right in the face.

“Sorry,” Peter said, turning the light away.

A metal ladder, bolted to the wall, stood next to the flashlight. Rust covered its rungs, and Lys could see an empty hole where one of the bolts should be. Above that, in the ceiling, lay another grate.

“Move,” Inez said, pushing past Kamau and Lys.

“Wait!” Brady said, leaving Mark to stand on his own. “It doesn’t look safe. Maybe you should let me go first.” He smiled at Inez. “You know, in case someone has infiltrated your secret hideout.”

Inez turned an icy stare on him.

“I’m pretty handy in a fight,” he insisted.

Inez stepped up on the ledge and put her hand on a rung. “I think I’ll be okay.” She started climbing the ladder. The ladder rose seven or eight rungs—the grate sat about ten feet above them. Inez reached the top and fiddled with a lock Lys hadn’t noticed. After a few seconds Lys heard a click and the grate swung up with a tiny squeak.

The realization that Inez and Peter lived in a “secret lair” underneath Las Vegas hit Lys hard, and she wondered how long they’d been there. Did either of them have any family? Friends? Anyplace they could go? In all of this, Lys always kept in her mind that her parents would help her. What if she didn’t even have that? What would she do?

Inez turned back, probably to say something, but she never got there. Instead her foot slipped and a rung of the ladder broke off.

The people that said near death experiences play out in slow motion were right. Lys watched as Inez slipped, then fell. Somehow she managed to keep one foot on a rung and it got caught. Her head started down for the ledge, and Lys flinched.

Everyone took a step forward, but Brady was faster. He got there before Lys had even fully realized that Inez might crack her head open against the stones. Like snatching a piece of fluff, he plucked Inez out of the air. She ended up parallel with the ground, one foot still stuck, cradled in Brady’s arms.

“Easy, watch your step,” he said, grinning.

For once Inez didn’t have a scowl on her face. She stared at Brady for a moment before he wiggled her foot free. Holding her like a child, he turned and gently set her down on the ledge.

“Told you I was a handy guy to have around.”

“That was awesome!” Peter cried, jumping up and down. “I’ve never seen anyone move that fast!”

Inez continued to stare at Brady, whose grin only got broader.

“Thanks,” she muttered, tucking a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear.

“Anytime,” Brady said. “Happy to oblige.”

Maybe Lys should explain to Brady that people in Las Vegas didn’t talk like old western movies. Then again, who was she to ruin the moment?

Peter tried to move past Inez, but she snatched him by the collar. “Oh, no you don’t.” A moment later she climbed up the ladder and out the grate.

The warm pressure of Kamau’s hand in hers got tighter.

“I wonder where we are going,” he said in a quiet voice.

Lys nodded. She wondered the same—along with about a million other things.

“Come on,” Inez said, her silhouette coming back into view.

Peter and Lys went first, leaving Kamau and Brady to help Mark.

“You’re gonna love this!” Peter said, excitement oozing from his voice. He climbed the ladder and disappeared. Lys followed, gingerly avoiding the top two rungs and pulling herself through the square hole.

Chapter 13

L
ys had
expected a short, squatty room covered in moss with the sound of dripping water coming from one corner. Wrong on all counts. Just as she got her shoulders through, a light came on. She squinted for a moment, allowing her eye to adjust. When she could see again, Lys looked around.

The crumbling remains of a once grand ballroom lay before her. Lys stopped with both elbows through the hole, her mouth hanging open.

“Awesome, isn’t it?” Peter asked, grinning. He offered Lys his hand, and she took it, getting up to her feet.

A chandelier the size of her bed hung twenty feet above her, all brass and crystal, an echo of something she’d expect to see in a European palace. On the end of each arm the stub of a candle rested, the wax dripping down. The ceiling—what was left of it—had an intricate pattern of flowers and leafs carved into dark wood. The far quarter of the room lay in ruins, much like a Lego house would if you ripped part of it off. Dirt, bricks, and stones cascaded into the ballroom, and it seemed to Lys that the place might be under excavation.

“Wow,” she said finally.

Inez moved away from one set of electric construction lights to another. Her boots clicked on the stone floor, and Lys noticed that most of the dirt and dust had been cleared away.

“Lys?” Brady’s voice came from back down the hole.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, turning. Mark’s head appeared and she held out her hand. He managed to get his arm up and Lys pulled.

“Maybe we should have planned this better,” Brady said, grunting from under Mark.

“We’ve got him,” Peter said. He grabbed the man’s other arm and hauled him up. Between the two of them, Mark soon sat on the stone floor, panting.

Brady crawled through the hole, and the moment his eyes took in the room a wide grin split his face. “You live here? What is this place?”

“It’s the ballroom of an old hotel,” Peter said, grinning still. “The rest of the building is mostly gone, but this part and a couple of other rooms are okay.”

“Nice secret lair,” Brady said appreciatively.

“Thanks.”

Kamau finally came up. His face betrayed nothing, but Lys thought she saw just a hint of wonder in his eyes. The Need jerked awake, and Lys took a step back.

“Are you two all alone?” Mark asked, looking around.

“Yeah, just Inez and me,” Peter said.

Lys swiveled her eye to watch Inez turn on the other set of lights, beating back most of the shadows. Right behind Inez, an arched doorway led away from the ballroom. Another smaller hallway sat beyond that. All of the other exits were either boarded up or sealed with cinderblocks.

“So what do you know about Brady’s eyes?” Mark asked Peter as Inez approached.

“I, uh . . .” Peter glanced at Inez.

“We don’t know much about it,” Inez said. She stopped a few feet from the rest of them, folding her arms across her stomach. “What do
you
know?”

Lys kept her eye down, but the Need continued to insist that she pay attention to it. A gnawing started in her mind, and her fingers began to twitch.

“Do you even know what his eyes mean?” Mark asked.

Inez regarded him for a moment before she looked away. “Not really.”

“It means we’re special!” Peter said. “It’s like super powers. Isn’t that how Brady can do so many cool things?”

Super powers. Lys tried to think. Brady could do amazing things—all of them seemingly feats of strength. Could Peter do that? If so, why hadn’t he? And what about Inez. A little voice in her head asked Lys, “What about me?” but she didn’t get a chance to think about it.

A wave of dizziness hit Lys and she reached out to steady herself.

Brady’s hand caught hers. “Easy,” he said, “I am pretty amazing, you don’t have to get all weird about it.”

Lys couldn’t help herself. Every sane bit of her screamed to keep her gaze down, but right now the sane bits were overrun by the Need. It forced her to look, demanded that she let it free from its prison. She tried to resist, but the strong arm of the Need slowly lifted her chin until she met Brady’s eyes.

“Everything okay?” Brady asked, his smile fading.

Lys shook her head and backed away. “Fine,” she managed to say. “I just . . . I just need to use the bathroom.”

Those eyes! Brady’s irises still swirled like black oil. Lys knew they were special. She needed them.

“Lys?” Kamau asked. He stepped toward her.

Her attention turned, and she saw Kamau’s eyes, still the color of wispy clouds. Without giving them a conscious order, Lys’s backpedaling feet stopped, and she began to move forward, fingers reaching up for the first eyes she could get her hands on.

“Lys!” Mark yelled.

The word, or perhaps the tone, caused her to falter. Just as soon as she felt control return to her limbs, Lys stumbled to get away from temptation. She fell, landing hard on her butt. She crawled like a crab, and kept going.

“What’s wrong?” Brady asked, concern in his voice.

Lys’s shoulder bumped into the nearest wall, and she began clawing at the old wood. She had to get away from the Need.

Kamau took a step toward her.

“No!” she yelled. “Please, just leave me alone.” The Need raged, furious with her weakness. She curled into a ball, trying to implode on herself. Maybe she would disappear.

Head to her knees, Lys squeezed her eye shut. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. “Please, please, please.” she begged, digging her fingernails into her legs.

Someone approached her and knelt on the ground. “Lys?” Kamau asked. He reached out and touched her arm.

She flinched back, pushing herself along the wall in an effort to put some space between her and Kamau. “Please, go away. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Why would you hurt me?” Kamau asked.

Lys didn’t get the chance to answer. Her eyes were burning. Not just the injured one, but both of them. It felt like she had smoldering coals in her eye sockets. Lys screamed—the same scream that Brady had emitted in the woods. She bit it back, trying to stop herself from going wherever she was about to go.

“She will lose control.” Kamau’s voice sounded like it was fifty feet away and underwater.

“No, talk to her, you can keep her from losing it. Use your power,” Mark insisted.

“Listen to me,” Kamau said. “Think about something nice. Someone you love. Maybe your parents.”

Lys shook her head. “No.” The image of her mother’s bandaged face haunted Lys. She’d tried to take her mother’s eye! What gave her the right to be alive?

“Let me die,” she whispered. She started to shake.

“No one is going to die,” Kamau insisted. “Listen to my voice. Breathe.”

Lys tried. She curled up into a tighter ball, but she felt Kamau grasp her hand.

“Can you understand me?”

Lys nodded, but yanked her hand away, desperate to keep from attacking him.

“She’s going to lose it!” Inez said. “Knock her out. It’s the only thing you can do. Or kill her.”

Lys was good with that.

“Just listen to the sound of my voice. We can get you through this.” He paused, and Lys felt his arms wrap around her. His breath tickled her ear as he spoke. “Do not let it wash over you. You are a rock, let it go around you. Rise above it. Look down on it. Do not let it touch you.”

Lys took a breath. Her heart stopped its attempt to wrench itself from her chest, and her eyes cooled from a smoldering coal to sunburn. The shaking continued—Lys felt as if she was breaking the worst fever of her life.

“Here,” she heard Mark say. “Put a tiny bit of this on both of her eyes.”

“But . . .” Kamau said.

“Trust me, it’ll help her control it. Just don’t put any near your mouth or ears. Then you’ll be in trouble.”

“Hold on,” Kamau said to Lys.

She felt him turn. Even behind her shut eyelid, she saw the world go fuzzy gray. A moment later images of everything around her began flashing through her head: looking at herself from Kamau’s eyes, seeing the room from the ceiling, running down the hall and going through a small space in the panel of a door, Mark glancing back and forth between Lys and Inez, who did indeed look like she would kill Lys. More hallucinations? Or something else?

Kamau was back. “Lys,” he said, “I’m going to put some of this on your eyes. It will help, but it might hurt.”

Lys nodded. It was all she could do.

A cold, clammy substance, something like hair gel, touched her eyelid. Lys drew back.

“It’s alright,” Kamau told her. “It won’t damage you.”

Lys didn’t care much about damage; the Need roared inside of her.

Kamau lifted up her eye patch and applied the gel to the other eyelid. For a moment nothing happened, and then Lys felt something break inside of her.

The scream came again, and
this time she was helpless to contain it. Visions, like those she had at the hospital, flooded her awareness. Other images crowded her mind. These filled her head like the wall of TVs at a department store. Each from a different person, each one overlapping the next. Like a thousand home movies playing all at once. Although how she knew that was beyond her. Lys only knew that it hurt.

Hurt worse than anything else so far. Not so much physical pain as it was mental anguish. She was overwhelmed—overloaded. Like the first hour at Disneyland on a crowded day. There was too much to process, too much to see.

However, she
wanted
to see it all. Every little bit of it. A part of Lys ate it up. A small taste didn’t satisfy her. No, she wanted—needed—more. Images flew through her mind, and Lys dove into them.

She saw people at a party having a costume contest for Halloween. She saw the shattered windows of the building they’d just run from. A horrible accident on the freeway had traffic backed up for miles. She watched a lovers’ quarrel, she saw a baby born. Lys was engulfed. She swam in the visions, ingesting everything.

People laughed, people cried. More babies were born, and people died. Some quietly, others brutally murdered. Lys saw it from every angle, and her mind devoured it and longed for more. The Need gorged itself, and finally it waned, perhaps satisfied at last. With the gnawing hunger inside of her gone, the visions started to thin.

Lys rose, swimming back from the depths of the ocean into shallow water. The images slowed, and she began to recognize people and places. After the inside hall of her high school disappeared, her own face resolved in three different perspectives. She looked horrible—bad hair, soggy scrubs, and a grimace of terror on her face. The green color of her skin made her look sickly as did her sunken cheeks. Was she dead? The more she thought about it, Lys decided she didn’t want to die.

“Is she going to be okay?”

One perspective turned to look at Mark’s face.

“She’ll be okay,” Mark said. “Lys!”

Lys felt her shoulder being shaken.

“Let me try,” Kamau said. “Lys? Can you hear me?”

Lys could. Kamau’s voice cut through the remaining overlapping images in her head.

“If you can hear me, follow my voice. Come back to us.”

She did so, latching her consciousness onto Kamau’s voice and following it back to the world.

Her eyes fluttered open. The
scenes that filled her head left when her gaze fell upon Kamau and Mark, both looking worried. Lys was laying on a couch, her head in Kamau’s lap.

“There she is!” Brady said brightly, his face coming into view.

“You okay?” Mark asked. “Any killing urges?”

Lys shook her head. That act alone sent her world spinning. The little man with the big hammer was back. “No,” she said in a haggard voice. She thought she might vomit. “What happened?”

Mark took a breath. “You just broke.”

“Broke what?” Brady asked.

“A barrier,” Mark replied.

“Is this something to do with the drug?” Lys asked.

“Oh, it’s not the drug,” Mark shook his head. “There is no drug.”

Mr. Doyle’s words came back to her. Had Mr. Mason really lied about all of this?

“No drug?” Lys asked.

“You’re a science experiment!” Peter said, pointing at himself. “Just like me and Inez. That’s what we think it is.”

Mark furrowed his brow. “Science experiment?”

“Yeah.” Peter pointed at Brady. “He has to be a mutant too. You saw what he did!”

“Mutant?” Brady looked at his hands. He nodded. “That would make sense.”

Mark shook his head. “You’re not mutants.”

“But we’re not drugged either?” Lys said. She struggled to sit up. Kamau helped her, keeping a hand on her shoulder.

“No, no drugs.”

Lys looked around. She noticed that old, mismatched furniture filled the small room. Inez scowled at her while Brady looked at his hands, Peter glanced back and forth between people, and when Lys got to Kamau, she found him watching Mark with interest.

Mark frowned at Inez. “You think you’re science experiments?”

She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “How else do you get ‘special powers’?” She put the last two words in air quotes. “I don’t go much in for the mutant theory.” She waved a hand at Peter.

“You’re not mutants,” Mark said.

“So we’re not freaks?” Peter asked, his eyes wide.

Brady laughed. “You’re a freak, kid.”

“So are you!” he shot back.

“No, you’re not freaks,” Mark said.

Still groggy, Lys watched and listened, trying to make sense of the conversation. It felt like she was missing a vital bit of information.

“So if it’s not drugs,” Brady said, “and we’re not mutants, what is it?”

“You probably won’t believe me even if I tell you,” Mark said, shaking his head.

“After what we just went through? I’d believe it if you told me we were aliens,” Brady said.

“No, you’re not aliens, and you’re not mutants.” Mark grinned.

“Then what is it?” Brady wailed.

“It’s magic.”