Born to Darkness (19 page)

“It’s not even a real rule. It’s just a suggestion. I’ve had boyfriends—the kind that I get intimate with—for years,” Mac confessed. “And here I am—as much of a Fifty as you are.”

“Maybe you’d be a Seventy if you’d abstained.”

“I doubt it, but for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Maybe I’d be a Seventy, but I’d also be a completely bitchy Seventy,” she told him.

“Hard to imagine you bitchier than you already are,” he murmured, and she actually laughed.

And that was when the most personal conversation they’d ever had ended, because Bach arrived.

“Don’t unshield completely,” Mac warned the maestro as he swept in and did a slow spin, looking around. He made note of everything—of her puke on the floor in the center of the room, of the way she and Diaz were sitting off to the side on the cold concrete with their backs against the brick wall. He closed his eyes briefly as she told him everything that she and Diaz had discovered here.

Well, not quite everything … She left out the personal 4-1-1 about Diaz being gay and her desire to keep on shagging one of their new Potentials.

“Analysis just called,” Bach informed them. “Littleton and his friend were ready for us to track them. The SAT images show twenty-three different vehicles leaving this facility after Nika and her abductors arrived. We’re in the process of tracking them all, but …” He shook his head.

There was no way of knowing for sure which car or truck Nika had been in when she was moved from this place.

Diaz stood up, and turned to help pull Mac to her feet. Because, like Mac, he knew what was coming.

“Let’s find them—Littleton and his cohort,” Bach told them. “Split up, but keep in touch. Mac, head over to the abduction point, see if you can’t get a traceable read on Nika’s emotional grid.”

“Yes, sir.”

That, along with the rapist’s grid—which Mac would now recognize instantly, and be able to pick out of a crowd at a close enough range—would help them find the girl. Of course, Rickie would be even easier to trace, because the Analysis team at OI knew most of his hangouts and haunts. Assuming, that is, that he hadn’t already left the city.

“Remember, please,” Bach added, “we need them both alive.”

Mac nodded, and as Bach swept back out the door, before she followed him, she turned to Diaz and said, “FYI, nothing’s changed.”

She didn’t wait for him to nod, but she could feel his relief—and a very genuine affection that almost made her pause—as she turned and walked away.

Dr. Zerkowski had been right. The living quarters at OI were fricking great.

Shane had expected a barracks-quality living situation for the unmarried test subjects, or maybe—because the place so closely resembled an ivy-league college campus—something more like a dorm. A lack of privacy. Shared bedrooms, bathrooms, and common areas. Narrow cots with cheap mattresses that were designed for eighteen-year-old co-eds.

Instead, he’d been given a suite of rooms, right out of those pictures on the OI website, one of which contained a luxurious king-sized bed.

The place had hardwood floors that gleamed—tile in the kitchen and bathroom—and furniture that was both pleasing to the eye and comfortable. Both the sofa and the easy chair in the living room were covered with rich leather, and the rest of the furniture was solid wood.

The kitchen had old-style granite, gleaming wood cabinets, and top-of-the-line appliances. Plus—hot damn!—the cabinets and fridge were stocked with all kinds of food, and a bowl of fresh fruit stood out on the counter.

The towels were plush, the sheets were soft, the blankets were fleece, the bathroom floor was
heated
.

One entire wall of the living room was windows—a slider opened onto a balcony, which overlooked a garden that hid what appeared to be a parking lot behind it. Or at least it would overlook that garden in the daylight—which was coming soon. Dawn already lit the sky to the east.

The view, like the entire lush accommodations, was lovely.

And Shane would’ve traded it in a heartbeat to be back at that dumpy little apartment near Kenmore Square, where Mac had told him he’d rocked her world.

And it wasn’t just about sex.

He liked her.

A lot.

Shane stood at the window, eating a banana that had somehow achieved the perfect state of ripeness, thinking about all the material he’d just read about neural integration. He’d been given an e-reader by a terse, gray-haired woman named Clara, down in Processing, who—like all the other OI staff he’d encountered, hadn’t so much as blinked at the fact that he’d arrived in the middle of the night.

Sleep be damned—he’d already plowed his way through most of the files Clara had given him.

And he still didn’t quite know what to make of any of it.

Apparently, according to the “scientists” here at the Obermeyer Institute, some people were born with the ability to integrate significantly more of their neural net, aka their brain. Doing so allowed them to develop some serious superpowers. But control of those powers required some equally serious training—a concept Shane well understood as a former SEAL.

But still …

It was off-the-scale in terms of the whoo-whoo factor. Probably because, also as a former SEAL, he well understood physical limitations. A body could only do what a body could do. It was as simple as that.

But according to the good folks at OI, a body could do almost anything that an integrated brain told it to do.

And apparently? Those same folks believed that Shane was a good potential candidate—aka a Potential—for their training program.

They were going to be disappointed, because their entire line of research was a total pile of bullshit. They were wasting their time, whether they spent two minutes or two months trying to get him to move a pencil with his mind.

Time he’d far rather waste in other ways.

Which brought him back to Mac.

He’d been playing and replaying all that he’d seen in the main OI lobby, and he’d come to the conclusion that he really
couldn’t
make any realistic conclusions about any of it.

Mac had been walking next to a man who’d said something that had made her laugh. Big fucking deal. Shane had spent time with plenty of women that he’d never so much as touched.

They both had motorcycles—Mac and her giant friend. So what? The Harley was a vehicle of choice for security specialists all around the globe.

When Shane pulled back his heavy shroud of jealousy and looked objectively at what he’d seen, he saw two people—one of whom he’d recently slept with—heading off purposefully on some kind of mission.

And yet he couldn’t help but hear an echo of Mac’s voice, right before she left him standing alone in the street, outside of her apartment.
It means I can’t see you again
.

There were quite a few reasons why she might’ve said that—only one being because she was already in a relationship with someone she worked with.

Shane threw away his banana peel, and picked up the phone that was out on the counter and punched zero.

It rang only once before it was picked up. “Lieutenant Laughlin,” a cheerful voice greeted him. “This is Robert in Hospitality. What can I get for you, sir?”

“Yes, hi,” Shane said, “I’d like to leave a message for Mac. I saw her leaving, so I know she’s not here at the Institute right now and, um, I’m wondering the best way to do that since I don’t have her phone number.”

There was a somewhat longish silence before Robert cleared his throat and said a whole lot less cheerfully, “Your request is … most unusual, sir. I’m not sure how to … Well, I
do
know that I can’t give out anyone’s private number. I’m sorry, but—”

“Nuh, nuh, no, I’m not asking you for that,” Shane said, even
though he hadn’t exactly
not
asked for it. This was a fishing expedition. He didn’t even know if Mac really did work here, and he still didn’t because Robert hadn’t given him much to go on. Although maybe he had. When Shane had asked for Mac, he hadn’t said,
Who?
Still, Shane wanted more. He made his voice match Robert’s initial joviality as he laughed. “If you
did
do that, I’d have to call Security to kick them in the ass, right? I just thought maybe you could, I don’t know—connect me to her voice mail?”

Another long pause. Come on, Robert. At least drop him a clue. Did Mac even have voice mail here?

The throat was cleared again, then, “I’m sorry, sir—”

“How about
you
leave her the message?” Shane tried. “Ask Mac to call me, okay? Whenever she gets in. It’s kind of urgent.”

“If it’s urgent, sir,” Robert said, “I can connect you to one of the other staff members.”

Hah. He was right. Mac was staff.

“Or,” Robert continued, “I can send someone up to escort you over to the health center …?”

Staff at OI’s health center …? Was Mac a doctor or maybe some kind of paramedic?

“Oh, nah, that’s okay,” Shane said. “I’m sure I can find my way over there, if I need anything.”

“Well, no, sir, I’m sorry, but you can’t,” Robert told him. “You haven’t been cleared for movement throughout the facility. Besides, all of the Potentials go into lockdown from midnight to oh-seven-hundred.”

Shane went over and tried to open first the slider to the balcony and then the door to the hallway. Sure enough, he was locked in. Sort of. The slider could be taken off its tracks and the main door’s hinges were on the inside, all of which made the lockdown mostly symbolic—at least to anyone who absolutely needed to get out. Although there were probably security cameras outside of the building and in the halls …

“I’m putting in a request for someone to come to your room,” Robert decided, and as Shane started to speak, he added, “
And
I’ll
leave your message for Dr. Mackenzie, although I have no idea when she’ll be back.”

Dr. Mackenzie
. Holy shit. Mac
was
a doctor. “Thanks,” Shane managed. “But—”

“Someone will be with you immediately,” Robert said.

“That’s really not necessary,” Shane said as the bell on his door buzzed. “Wow, that was fast.”

“Have a pleasant morning, sir,” Robert said, and cut the connection.

Shane hung up the phone and went back to the door—which he still couldn’t open. But there was some kind of intercom system right near a standard peephole, so he leaned on the button. “I’m kind of locked in.”

The peephole revealed a tall man wearing a lab coat and … Yeah, it was Dr. Zerkowski. He was just as rumpled, but a lot more tired than he’d looked all those hours ago, when they’d spoken via Vurp. “I have a master key,” the doctor said now. “May I come in?”

“Knock yourself out,” Shane said, and the door opened. “I’m sorry you were bothered, Doc. I really don’t need anything—”

“Yeah, I know,” the doctor told him. “I scanned the transcript of your phone call—the beginning of it, at least. Did you get the information you wanted?”

Shane laughed his surprise, which kind of killed his ability to play dumb. He tried anyway. “I’m sorry …?”

“Not entirely, huh?” Zerkowski said. “Thanks, I
will
come inside for a minute. And it’s Elliot. Please.” He stepped forward, a move that forced Shane to shift back, and the door closed behind him. “Actually, I was in the building when I heard that you’d arrived. Since you’re obviously still awake, I thought I’d drop by.” He smiled at Shane. “And keep you from giving another entry-level worker the third degree about Mac, who happens to be a friend of mine. Didn’t it occur to you that it might be problematic for a Potential to be asking a lot of questions about her, leaving her messages …?” He answered his own question as he went into the
living room. “Probably not. Same way it probably didn’t occur to her that you’d put two and two together and show up here with a lot of questions needing answers.”

“I just want to talk to her,” Shane said.

Elliot gave him a pointedly
oh really?
look as he sat on the sofa. But he changed the topic. “You have any questions about the program?” He gestured toward the e-reader. “I see you’ve been given an overview.”

“Yeah, I guess my biggest question,” Shane said as he stayed standing, leaning against the wall that separated the main room from the bedroom, “is about how to handle the anticipation. I mean, I’m not sure I can wait to find out whether my big superpower is going to be flying or invisibility.”

The doctor laughed. “A nonbeliever. Better and better. For the record, Mac thinks you could be very special.”

Shane had to work it, overtime, to keep himself from reacting, and this time he was pretty sure he’d pulled it off.

“And excuse me for the incredulous staring,” Elliot continued, “because you’re even more … 
military
in real life than you are over Vurp, and you come across as pretty intensely military, even over the Internet. I think I’m also having a bit of a disconnect because you’re not at all what I’d imagined as Mac’s type for a bar hookup.”

As accurate as his being a bar hookup was, it was entirely possible that Elliot was on as much of a fishing expedition as Shane had been on earlier. So Shane kept his face blank and his mouth tightly shut.