Born to Darkness (14 page)

Bach was being much more tactful and far less alarmist as he explained the science to Anna. Eventually, however, he’d have to get to the horror of it all, because the truth was the truth. Nika had been kidnapped by some real asshole-bastards who belonged to a group called the Organization, who were going to terrorize her and possibly beat or even rape her to keep her in a constant state of fear that would allow them to increase production of a drug that killed nearly everyone who used it.

A drug that made its manufacturers and dealers insanely rich …

Elliot pushed himself to his feet, and Bach trailed off mid-sentence to look up at him questioningly. There were shades of
don’t leave me here alone with her
in his eyes—which, okay, could really just be a figment of Elliot’s creative imagination. Joseph Bach was, after all, afraid of nothing.

He was especially unafraid of attractive young women who pictured him naked.

“I gotta …” Elliot pointed to the door. “Mackenzie surfaced.”

Bach looked across the conference table at Anna, then back at Elliot as he took a deep breath and managed a curt nod. And wasn’t
that
interesting? Maybe Elliot
wasn’t
imagining Bach’s trepidation at being alone with the woman.

“Good,” Bach said. “Tell her I want to see her before she vanishes again.”

“I will.” Elliot looked from Bach to Anna. “Did anyone show you to your quarters yet?”

She blinked up at him, then looked to Bach for confirmation. “Quarters?”

“We’re going to want you to stay here,” Bach told her. “At least until we find Nika.”

He hadn’t gotten even close to what they all hoped would come
after
they rescued Nika from the nightmare in which she was trapped. They hoped that Nika would sign on for training here at OI—which would mean that she and her older sister would become full-time residents.

Here and now, however, Anna was nodding. “And if I don’t want to stay here, you’ll … use your powers to muck around inside my head and make me
think
that I do.”

Awk
ward.

Apparently Anna wasn’t just going to forget about that little unauthorized personal B&E that Bach had performed on her, in order to get her here safely.

Elliot took that as his cue to exit stage right, and he slipped out the door. He loved Joseph Bach like a brother, but the man was on his own for this one. As he hit the corridor, he set his phone on its intercom feature and buzzed the nurses’ desk. “Kyle, send Dr. Mackenzie into exam room one when she arrives.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and she injured her ankle while she was out there tonight, so be aggressive in checking to make sure she doesn’t need assistance.”

“I’m on it, Doctor,” Kyle’s voice came back.

This had been one long, awful, total bitch of a night, and it wasn’t over yet. And after Elliot gave in to the fatigue and collapsed in his bed, he knew he was going to stare at the ceiling, unable to sleep because he was going to be thinking about Nika. The kid’s night wasn’t anywhere close to over, and daybreak wouldn’t save her. She was going to have to endure whatever nightmares were being thrown at her until they could pinpoint her location and kick down the doors and get her the hell out of there.

It was at times like these that Elliot wished he were on Bach’s door-kicking-down team, instead of merely being in charge of research and support. And as long as he was wishing for things that would never happen, he also wished he could learn how to become more fully integrated.

But he couldn’t. He was—without a doubt—a mere fraction. Early on in his career, he’d thought he might be one of the gifted ones, since he tested, at times, at a higher-than-average fifteen percent. But try as he might, he was unable to move beyond that.

Eventually he’d come to accept that there was no chance of his ever learning how to fart lightning bolts. Fate had sidelined him, and the best he could do was provide assistance and support to the Greater-Thans like Bach and Mac. And Diaz.

Elliot sighed as he opened the door to exam room one. It was dark inside and the automatic sensors didn’t make the room light up, which was odd. So he slapped the wall switch, and the fluorescents sparked to life.

And illuminated Stephen Diaz, who was sitting on the floor in the corner with his knees drawn up to his broad chest, his head in his hands.

“Oh, sorry,” Elliot said. “I’m
so
sorry—I didn’t know you were in here.”

Diaz was up and on his feet so quickly, in one smooth motion, that Elliot almost doubted what he’d just seen. Almost. But he closed the door and stepped directly in front of it, blocking the exit, as he asked Diaz, “Are you okay?”

The other man couldn’t—or wouldn’t—meet Elliot’s eyes as he shook his head no, even as he ran his hands down his face and said, “Yeah, I’m just … I needed a minute. It was a really rough night and …” He made a sound that was vaguely laughter-like as he shook his head again.

“Yes, it was a rough night,” Elliot agreed. “Come on. Quick med scan. Off with your clothes and up on the table. Computer, access EZ. Prep full scan of Dr. Stephen Diaz. I know you did this when you first came in, but … It’ll take us two minutes, tops.”

Diaz looked as if he were going to give birth to a water buffalo,
right there on the exam room floor. “Oh,” he said. “No. No, I just … I really need to be alone right now. I need to
not
, um …”

Elliot made a face. “Stephen. I gotta scan you, man. You know the rules. We can’t play games with your health and well-being. If you’re having a problem—”

“I’m
fine
,” Diaz insisted. “It’s just overwhelm. Please, Dr. Z, I need you to give me a break.” He closed his eyes.
“Please.”

If he’d wanted to, Diaz could’ve gone right through Elliot. Not only was he bigger and stronger, but at fifty percent integrated, he could’ve picked up Elliot without laying hands on him, floated him through the air, and moved him away from the door.

But a significant part of the training program here at OI focused on choosing when and where to unleash one’s powers. And in dealing, respectfully, with all of the many fractions who inhabited the world. Between Diaz and Mackenzie, Mac was the one who had trouble in that department.

Diaz, however, completely embraced the zen-related philosophy and monk-like lifestyle that was supposed to allow him to train more easily as he strove to be even more highly integrated.

A man of few words, he usually moved quietly through the halls at OI, doing his work and keeping to himself—which couldn’t have been all that easy for him, considering the amount of attention he generated just by looking the way he did.

The Greater-Than was jacked. He was also about three inches taller than Elliot, and Elliot had passed the six feet mark back before he’d turned fifteen. Diaz walked around on legs that were like tree trunks, and had those arms and shoulders that … Yes. The man was in excellent physical shape. And with his dark hair worn short, those stormy-ocean green eyes, perfect nose, and chiseled features …

Needless to say, Diaz’s visits to the OI gym had become something of a spectator sport for the female R&D staff.

Even though—at least as far as Elliot knew—Diaz took his training vows and accompanying celibacy very seriously.

But the truth was that Elliot
didn’t
know. He and Diaz weren’t friends. They were co-workers. Acquaintances who shared a mutual
respect for one another. They knew each other well enough to not be thrown if they were matched during the holiday season as each other’s Secret Santas. But while Elliot regularly hung out with Mac and occasionally shot the shit with Bach, he’d never sat and chilled with Diaz.

Not once.

But that wasn’t because Elliot hadn’t tried. For the seven years he’d worked here—including the past three that he’d lived on campus—he’d kept the friend card at the top of his deck whenever he’d dealt with Diaz.

It was Diaz who’d carefully kept his distance.

For a while, Elliot had thought that it might have been a gay thing—that Diaz was uncomfortable with Elliot’s sexual orientation. But as time went on, he’d realized that Diaz kept his distance from everyone.

“Okay. You can go,” Elliot said, but he didn’t move away from the door as Diaz opened his eyes to look at him. Eye contact. Finally. His pupils weren’t dilated and his eyes weren’t glazed. That was good. “But if I don’t see a report that you’ve been scanned again, sometime within the next thirty minutes? Don’t make me come and find you. Because I will. And
that’s
a promise.”

Diaz clenched his teeth, the muscles jumping in his jaw as he just stood there, staring back at him.

“You understand?” Elliot pushed.

Diaz closed his eyes and nodded. He even laughed a little as he whispered, “I understand,” as if something Elliot had said was funny.

“Good.” Elliot didn’t get the joke, but he stepped to the side.

Diaz moved swiftly toward the door and threw it open.…

And collided with Michelle Mackenzie who was on the other side, about to come in.

Diaz was moving so fast that he couldn’t stop himself even though he tried, and she was almost literally half his size, so they both went down, hard, onto the hallway’s tile floor.

“Holy shit!” Mac said, then, “Sorry!
Sorry!
” as Elliot scrambled after them, intending to help.

But Mac was already back on her feet, so he turned to Diaz, who was still on the floor.

“You all right?” he asked them both.

“I’m good,” Mac said, “but I kinda gave D a pretty enthusiastic knee to the junk. Auto-pilot kicked in and … Sorry, about that.”

Elliot knew from the endless testing and reports, that that kind of pain was difficult to block. It was one thing for a Greater-Than like Diaz or Bach—or even one of the trainees like Charlie or Brian—to go into an altercation with their ability to block pain already in place. In those cases, they could conceivably endure a full-on electrical current to the gonads without blinking. But the male anatomy was such that, if they
weren’t
blocking pain, and they accidentally got whacked, masking that pain was like stopping a stone that had been thrown into water. You might be able to freeze the stone in place, but you couldn’t still the ripples that its impact had created.

“I’m okay,” Diaz said, although he sounded anything but. “It was more the surprise than the hit.”

Elliot extended his hand to help him up, but Diaz looked at it and shook his head. He reached to help Diaz anyway, taking hold of the bigger man’s arm and—

Holy crap!

He got slammed by a wave of heat and power that came with an image that was bright and full-color:
Diaz, in a room that Elliot had seen before—but where?—half-sitting, half-lying back, exactly as he was there on the floor, except he was on a bed and he was naked. And instead of reaching to help him up, Elliot was joining him, reaching for Diaz in a different way entirely as they both smiled …

The image shifted suddenly, almost before Elliot had even processed it, turning into a rapid-fire sequence of pictures that flashed through his brain with an accompanying soundtrack of something that might’ve been a thunderclap with each new burst.

That contact, with Elliot’s hand wrapped around Diaz
.

Diaz’s gasp of pleasure …

The intensity of a kiss, deep, long, hot …

Sex—Elliot on top, their bodies straining …

It happened so fast and filled Elliot’s mind so completely, there was no room for other thoughts. In fact, he could barely remember how to breathe.

The images might’ve continued, but the sheer force of it all knocked him back onto the floor, on his ass. And when he let go of Diaz, it stopped—both the images and that incredible heat.

“Hey,” Mac was saying, as she swiftly moved to help him. “El, you okay?”

Elliot couldn’t do much more than stare at Diaz, who was pushing himself to his feet.

“Did he shock you?” Mac asked. “D, you need to be careful. I had this weird power surge tonight. I don’t know if it had to do with the joker we contained, or maybe it was having Bach’s skills slapped back at us, but … I’ve had some strange shit happen tonight, myself.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” Diaz murmured, but he didn’t meet Elliot’s eyes as Elliot managed to grind out, “I don’t think
that
was an electric shock.”

“I’m gonna …” Diaz pointed down the hall. “Go.”

“Now I
really
want that full med scan done in the next thirty minutes,” Elliot said, as Mac helped him to his feet.

“Or you’ll come and find me,” Diaz repeated his earlier words. “I got it.” And then he did meet Elliot’s eyes—for a mere fraction of a second—before he jammed his hands in his pockets and hurried away.

Elliot stood there, dumbstruck, watching him leave. Holy crap. That definitely hadn’t been an electric shock—it had been a
projection
. Elliot had experienced the phenomenon before while doing tests with Joseph Bach, who, at appropriately close-range, could project his thoughts quite easily into another person’s head—even someone as less-than as Elliot.

Bach often used the method to communicate with his team while they were apprehending a joker.

Diaz’s projection had been similar in some ways to Bach’s—the
unfamiliar warmth and the sensation of having one’s mind filled, completely, with another’s thoughts.

But in other ways? It had been
extremely
different. Elliot hadn’t received structured thoughts and clear messages from Diaz, but rather something more jumbled and chaotic.

In fact, it was entirely possible that Diaz was completely unaware of all that he’d just shared.

“What just happened here?” Mac asked, as Elliot exhaled what probably sounded to her like a laugh.

He glanced over to find her watching him, so he shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, as he motioned for her to go into exam room one. “I definitely have a boatload of questions for you about this power surge you experienced, but first I need to give you a scan.”

He looked back, one last time, in the direction that Diaz had gone, but the man had finally turned the corner, way down at the end of the hall.