Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) (12 page)

“Can Bernard see them?”

“As well as I can, if not better because he has more experience. He and I were swinging around on them during our fight. That’s why it looked so strange to you.”

“What else can you do?”

Dade, who had been standing to her right shoulder, was suddenly standing at her left. Now he was back on the right. Now both. Now he is standing on the ground twenty floors below, waving. He was back at her right side as though nothing had changed.

Disoriented and confused at first, Ann Marie’s expression quickly changed to unabashed excitement. “You can teleport,” She said.

“It takes some learning.”

“So it’s not magic?”

“There is no such thing as magic, Ann Marie. Just lost knowledge.”

“So anyone can learn to do it?”

“Anyone who’s willing to learn more than they ever wanted to know and willing to endure the worst kind of fear. In other words, practically no one.”

Ann Marie clamped her eyes shut, took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind. “I’m trying to see them,” she said as though suddenly in the middle of a yoga session. “I’m trying.” Then she slowly drew her eyes open, fully expecting the luminous tendrils to suddenly fill the scene. After unsuccessfully staring off for a few seconds, she shouted, “Damn it! I can’t see anything.”

Dade Harkenrider started to giggle at her effort, saying, “If it was that easy, the American military would have figured it out years ago.”

...

A few days later, as the sun was going down, she took the elevator up for their nightly experiment. Dade was outside on the deck, looking out over the Pacific. A dozen baby DeathStalkers scurried around at his feet. The rodent-sized machines were combining their bodies into different shapes by linking to each other’s claws and tails. It seemed to be a lighthearted game for the robots. A few more were inside, engaged in a playful match of stalk and chase with the laboratory cats.

He realized she was there without turning around. “You came,” he said.

“I thought that was the plan.”

He turned and smiled in a way that put her more at ease. He said, “Tonight is going to be important.”

“Why?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he answered. “But it’s something I can feel in the air. A buzzing. The cats are very sensitive in these matters and I can tell they feel the same thing.”

“Is it a good thing?”

“In my experience, probably not.”

They walked back into the lab with the baby DeathStalkers following Dade like ducklings. He already had the tank warming to body temperature in preparation for his voyage. The fume hood across the lab had been taken over by his synthesis apparatus. It looked like a massive highway overpass system of glass tubing, heaters and flasks.

“This stuff must be hard to make,” said Ann Marie, admiring the complexity of the setup. “Your yield must be pretty low.”

“Disaster,” he told her. “That’s one of the reasons your techniques are so important.”

At that point, Dade prepared to enter the tank. His body was covered in a plush gray robe labelled:
Asylum Corporation
. For once, he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. He poured himself a seven-hundred-and-fifty milliliter beaker full of a thick white liquid. It looked like yogurt. He sucked the liquid down without tasting it.

“What’s in that stuff?” Ann Marie asked him.

“A specially engineered algae solution. It contains all the necessary vitamins, fats and protein.” Dade wiped his mouth and started to adjust the settings on the tank’s control panel.

“Don’t you ever eat, you know, food?”

“It’s all I’ve had for the last fifteen years,” he said. Then he connected sensor pads to his body to test his blood pressure and galvanic skin response.

“Why do you want to kill that Bernard guy so bad?”

Smiling with one corner of his mouth, he told her, “I guess I’m just a dangerous psychopath who randomly attacks innocent senior citizens.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Don’t trust him,” said Dade. “Don’t listen to a word he says, not because he’ll lie to you, but because he’ll tell you the truth.”

“I don’t understand.”

He climbed the ladder to the top of the tank and sat on the edge. He stopped and looked at her. Without his trademark black sunglasses, his eyes looked haunted by fear. “I’m going deep tonight,” he said. “It’s the only way to see.”

“See what?”

“Part of Bernard’s plan if I’m lucky.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I’ve been concentrating on Bernard since he arrived. I’ve been blocking out my thoughts and quieting my internal dialogue. I have to make my consciousness expand into Bernard’s.”

“What do I need to do?”

“Don’t help or assist me under any circumstances once the tank is closed,” Dade ordered.

“What if something goes wrong?”

“Just don’t let me out of the tank until I’m out of the trip.”

He let himself slide down into the warm, oxygen-rich liquid. When he saw her on the other side of the acrylic, he gave her a thumbs-up to lower and lock the lid. Dade injected himself and the tank dimmed to black the way it normally did. Ann Marie kept careful watch on his vital signs.

Everything looked normal until about twelve minutes in. At that point, Dade’s brainwaves flatlined and his heartbeat became dangerously weak. It triggered something in the tank’s computer system and the sequence started to abort.

Something was definitely wrong. As the walls of the tank started to clear, she could see Dade’s lifeless floating body. He looked deader than usual. Then, suddenly, his eyes sprang open. They were nothing but black orbs. The sight made Ann Marie jump back.

His body began to jerk and his heart rate climbed to a dangerous level. His eyes came back to life and they were filled with terror. He pounded on the acrylic, trying desperately to fight his way out.

Seeing him like that was agonizing for Ann Marie. She started looking everywhere for something to open the tank. She climbed to the top and opened the electrical panel near the lid. With her hands shaking, she found the wires to the motor that lifted it open. She ripped them out and reconnected them in a different configuration. The lid slowly came up.

Dade was still fighting to get out. She reached into the warm liquid and grabbed for his hands. When she got him out, he was shaking so hard that his slippery body was difficult to get ahold of. Before she could help him down the ladder, he teleported across the lab onto the cot where he slept.

When she got over to him, his body was shaking like he had a bad fever. He threw both his hands over his heart like he was trying to stop someone from stabbing him in the chest. Then, suddenly, his body began to flash in and out in a strobe pattern. It was as if he was disappearing and reappearing. She put her hand on his forehead and the flashing stopped.

“That was scary,” he whispered.

“So don’t ever do it again.”

“I have to.”

He coughed some more and tucked his body into the fetal position. His eyes closed. He seemed to be slipping back into some kind of trance. Sounding very afraid, he started babbling to himself. He sounded like a little boy. “Please don’t hurt Ivy,” he said. “Please. Don’t hurt Ivy, Bernard. No. Please. Not Ivy.” The words were bringing him a great deal of pain.

“You OK, Dade?” Ann Marie asked as she knelt by the side of the bed. When he didn’t answer she asked, “Can I do anything? Can I help you?”

His trance had apparently taken him far away and he didn’t respond to her. He just kept mumbling something about someone called, Ivy.

Ann Marie climbed into the cot. Dade was still covered in slippery breathing liquid and it got all over her too. With him in a distant trance, she pressed herself into him as close as she could. Closing her eyes, she picked up his arm and brought it over her shoulders.

Chapter 7

Ivy, the Beautiful

Twenty-five years earlier, Bernard Mengel stared out of the tinted window of his black limousine. He was watching a little brunette girl, who was perhaps five or six years old. She was playing in a blue plastic wading pool that had been turned into a sandbox. The little girl stuck a yellow shovel into the sand. She scooped some up before letting it drizzle back into the box. She had silver dollar-sized pale blue eyes and hair as black as the feathers of a raven. The little girl seemed perfectly at home by herself in front of the small, one-story house. She was so absorbed by her imagination that she didn’t notice the stretch limo across the street.

Bernard was nearly pressing his face against the glass to get the best possible look at her. His expression was blank because he was so completely captivated by the little girl and what was about to happen. He told his driver to wait and leave the engine running.

Off in the hazy distance, a massive crane moved a section of steel frame for the Asylum Laboratory. The new building was starting to assume its beehive shape on the big hill in Palos Verdes. Bernard admired it like it was his own sculpture.

He walked up to the front of the house where the little girl was playing and leaned on the fence that ran around the yard. “Hello m’dear,” he said to her. When she only timidly smiled back, he went on, saying, “You probably don’t remember me but I saw you the day you were born.” Bernard took off his plaid fedora and brought it to his chest. “Do I seem familiar at all, perhaps?”

The little girl considered it before nodding her head.

“Your name is Ivy,” the old man said. “Isn’t it?”

The little girl nodded again and said, “Um hum.” Then she turned her attention back to digging in the sand with the plastic shovel.

“May I come a little closer?”

Little Ivy nodded again but didn’t take her eyes off the sandbox. Bernard lifted the latch on the fence and let himself in the yard. Inside the house, the little girl’s parents were sitting on the couch watching television. Their eyes turned a pool of black when Bernard got closer to the house. Then, in a kind of coma or trance, they fell into a lean against each other. They both stared at the TV, hypnotized with their eyes as black as crude oil.

“I saw you in my room before,” the little girl said. “At the foot of my bed.”

A smiled oozed from Bernard’s lips and he said, “I missed you, m’dear.”

“I’m supposed to tell my parents if anyone talks to me while I’m outside.”

“Well then, by all means, call out for them.”

“Mom!” Ivy shouted. “Dad! There’s a man out here talking to me. It’s the man from my room!”

Her parents’ eyes were dark and lifeless. Their bodies were limp like fresh corpses.

“You’re a special little girl,” said Bernard as he took a few steps closer. “You have no idea how special. That’s why I’ve been coming to you. That’s why I’m here.” He reached into his front jacket pocket and pulled out a red silk handkerchief. He unfolded it and stretched it across a patch of sandbox to sit on. Then he positioned himself across from the little girl with his legs folded up Indian style. It looked as though the old man and Ivy were about to have a tea party.

Just then, the door of Bernard’s limousine opened and the driver stepped out. He walked past the sandbox and into the house where the little girls parents were staring off into the blackness. While they sat blank, Bernard’s driver took out a hunting knife and slit both their throats. The only noise they made was a near silent gurgling. Like water over the edge of a full sink, blood slipped out of the gashes in their throats and covered the floor. The black orbs in their eye sockets grayed and eventually only their dead animal eyes remained.

Ivy hadn’t heard what had happened and she asked Bernard, “How do you come into my dreams at night?”

“Someday I’ll teach you,” he answered. “You’re going to be a master like me one day.”

“Mom!” Ivy shouted from her sandbox. “The guy from my room is right here. Come out and see him! Dad!”

“Do you know what it means to be a master?” The old man asked her.

Ivy shook her head no.

“It means,” Bernard explained, “that you understand the world in a way that almost no humans do. It means being part of the most serious and exclusive club there is. Is that something you want?”

Ivy crinkled up her nose while she thought about it. “Sure!” she said, smiling. “I want to be part of the club.”

“Are you sure? Getting in isn’t easy. You have to sacrifice.”

“I want into the club,” said Ivy. She called out again for her parents, saying, “Mom! Dad! This man says I get to be in a secret club!”

“Do you see what they’re building up there?” Bernard pointed to the top of the hill, where the frame of the Asylum Laboratory was coming together. “That’s all mine. That’s my clubhouse.”

“It looks like a beehive.”

“Indeed it does, m’dear,” said Bernard, looking up at the construction site with beaming pride. “Now this next order of business is bound to be a bit unpleasant, I’m afraid. Ivy, you understand that sometimes things we want require sacrifice?”

The little girl shrugged her shoulders as though the question made little sense to her. “I guess,” she said.

“Now, I’m not a mean man,” he said, staring little Ivy right in the eye. “But you’re going to forget that. You’re going to think I’m bad. Real bad. But what’s about to happen is actually good. It’s going to make your life so much more special and one day, you’re going to thank me. One day, we’re going to be closer, closer than two people can be.”

Bernard grabbed a handful of her black hair and Ivy started screaming. He held her tightly by the hair while she fought to run away. He stretched her across the sandbox on her back while he held her head down by the hair. Ivy saw her reflection in the side of a polished scalpel blade.

Bernard held it up to her face and started slashing. Her face burned and blood and tears filled her eyes. Bernard continued to hack at her cheek.

“Now now,” he said. “Let’s not struggle too much.” He pulled out a syringe that he stuck into her neck. Her eyelids immediately took on weight and she started to go to sleep. “The next few years are going to feel very lonely,” he told her. “But I’ll be there the whole time. I’ll be watching.” He brushed some black hair from across her blood-soaked forehead. “When it seems like things are cruel and hopeless, I’ll be there. I’ll be guiding you. Even when you don’t see me, my hands, my influence will be there, guiding you.”