Immune (36 page)

Straightening once again, he rubbed the base of his back, returned the glasses to their position on his nose, and pushed the cart back into the hallway. He paused to turn off the light and lock the door behind him before once again picking up the hypnotic mopping motion that made him all but invisible to the guards and their monitors.

It had taken him six weeks of calling in every underworld IOU he had amassed over his career, as well as the bulk of his life savings to obtain the fake identity that had passed the security checks, which had allowed him to get this job. But the janitor had no doubt that the investment would prove well worth the cost.

Several times, in the deep, post-midnight silence of Henderson House, he had heard the noises percolating up from the depths of the facility, from the lower levels to which he was denied access. Sometimes it sounded like distant screams. At other times, the sounds hinted at something far more horrible. They were so strange and distant that he could have almost believed he imagined it.

But if there was one thing his ex-wives agreed upon, it was that imagination was a trait he completely lacked. As he worked the mop steadily back and forth, the thinnest of smiles tweaked the corners of Freddy Hagerman’s mouth. Imagination indeed.

“Where’s Jennifer?” Heather asked as she opened the front door to let Mark in.

“Grounded for life.”

“Jennifer?”

“The one and only.”

Before Heather could quiz him further, her mom entered the living room, still in her Sunday best. “Well hello, Mark. Where’s Jennifer?”

“Hi, Mrs. McFarland. Jennifer had something she had to do, so it’s just me.”

Mrs. McFarland smiled as she continued toward the door to the garage. “It’s not that we’re not glad to see you, too. I’ve got some errands to run in town myself. There are some leftovers in the fridge if you kids get hungry.”

As the door closed behind her, Heather plopped down on the couch across from Mark. “Okay. Spill it. What happened with Jen?”

Mark shook his head. “Well you know how odd she’s been acting these last few weeks. Last night she snuck out and went to a party with some of the cheerleaders.”

Heather’s mouth dropped open. “Snuck out?”

“After Mom specifically told her she couldn’t go.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I didn’t believe it myself. Dad blew a fuse.”

“I can imagine. Have you talked to her? Jen must be pretty shaken up.”

“Not so you’d notice. I stuck my head into her room this morning and she was just sitting at her laptop like nothing had happened. She just laughed in my face when I asked about it.”

A frown spread across Heather’s face. “Mark, I’m really worried about her.”

“You and me both.”

“There’s something she’s not telling us. Ever since the science contest, her abilities have been changing in ways I don’t understand.”

“It started before that. I should have noticed it when she started jogging at night.”

“That doesn’t sound like her. When did she do that?”

“Shortly after school let out for the summer. I noticed it, but I was so wrapped up in what I was working on that I didn’t really press her about it.”

“How often was she doing it?”

“Every night, I think.”

Heather felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach. “She was going out to the ship!”

Mark slapped his palm to his forehead. “Damn it. Of course. That’s what she’s been hiding from us.”

“It explains how we got into that room we could never open before. Jen must have figured out how to access more of the ship’s computers. And somehow that closer link has changed her.”

“She’s taken the next step. But what are we supposed to do about it?”

Heather closed her eyes. She had the feeling that she should be able to see something important, something that she couldn’t quite pull to the forefront of her mind.

“I don’t know.”

Mark leaned forward, his deep brown eyes locking with hers. “There’s something else I want to discuss with you. Please don’t get mad at me.”

Heather felt herself tense. Oh great. Here it comes.

“It’s not just Jennifer that is changing,” Mark continued. “It’s all of us. She’s just changed faster than us, most likely because of her visits to the ship. But I’ve struggled all summer to get control of myself. Then there are your visions.”

“Don’t go there.”

Mark swallowed hard, but continued. “I’m not going to preach at you. But I want to ask you to do one favor for me.”

“You can ask, but I’m not promising anything.”

“I won’t pretend to know how hard this has been for you. But I’ve been hiding stuff too. All summer I’ve been having a harder and harder time controlling my emotions. It’s like I get a heavy-duty hit of adrenaline over the least little thing.”

“Sounds like PMS,” Heather said, immediately regretting the snippy remark.

Mark nodded. “I probably deserved that. But if it’s PMS, then it’s the type that makes me want to break things, including people. The problem is, I could do it. Last week I almost hit Jennifer, and I don’t mean any friendly little love tap. I could have killed her.”

Seeing the dread in Mark’s face, Heather believed him. Dear Lord. What were they all becoming?

“But then I discovered something. You know how hard I’ve been practicing my meditation routines. The trouble is that meditation takes time. At least it used to.”

“What do you mean?” Mark now had Heather’s complete attention.

“I discovered that I can just recall how I felt during a certain meditation and it puts me there. Think about it. We all have these perfect memories. For us, remembering something is exactly like reliving it. Anyway, once I had the idea, I began mentally cataloguing a variety of meditation levels. I can drop into any one of them almost instantaneously.”

Before she could respond, Mark’s eyes lost their focus, his chest stilling to the point that she thought he had stopped breathing. But it was moving, just in a very slow rhythm.

Fascinated, Heather moved over to his chair and reached out to feel the pulse in his right wrist. A steady twenty-four beats per minute. Within seconds, it shifted to fifty-three beats per minute and his eyes returned to their normal alert expression.

“Wow!” was all she managed to say.

“And that brings me to my favor,” Mark said, his face as serious as Heather could remember seeing it. “I don’t think the ship is changing us into something inhuman. I think we were right from the beginning, that it’s just released all of our human potential. The problem is that we don’t have any idea what that means. Maybe a thousand years from now, or a million, every human will be using every part of the brain. But we’re just stumbling around trying to figure out what new thing is going to happen to us next.

“As scared as we are of what is happening, I think we’ve got to accept these gifts and learn to use them. I want you to let me teach you the meditation trick. Then I want you to stop taking the drugs they have you on.”

Heather had known what was coming from the instant Mark had started talking, but his demonstration had at least made such a thing seem possible.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“I know. You’ve always been as aggressive and confident as I am. Do you remember that day when you talked me into climbing Ship Rock on the hard side? That’s still your personality.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. You’re not going crazy. You have a gift for seeing visions of the most likely outcomes. You just have to learn to turn it on or off at will. Maybe that’s as simple as remembering what it feels like when a vision is coming on or when one isn’t. I don’t know, but we need to find out. I think we’re going to have to learn to use every bit of our augmented brains and bodies to have any hope of stopping the Rho Ship and Dr. Stephenson. Besides, after what that bastard has done to us, I want to nail his ass to the wall.”

For several seconds Heather remained still, remembering the feel of that climb up the sheer face of Ship Rock, the thrill of fear as she dangled from the wall, and the exhilaration of reaching the summit. Ever so slowly, she nodded.

“How do you want me to start?”

Having spent the day working with Heather, coaching her on several of his favorite meditation techniques, Mark was as optimistic as he’d been in the last six months. Heather was always great at whatever she put her mind to, and once she had decided to master the techniques he showed her she was nothing less than amazing. Sometime around three o’clock, as the Thorazine dissipated from her system, she had wavered under the impact of an impending vision. But Mark interceded, physically shaking her until she regained her focus on his face. Then, ever so gently, he made her recall one of the meditation levels she had achieved.

The memory of how she had felt during the meditation worked its magic, completely banishing the vision and its associated sense of loss of control. Heather was so thrilled that she hugged and kissed him, something that almost caused Mark to lose his own self-control. He was quite certain that, if the kiss hadn’t been quite as best-friendish, he would have devolved into a lovesick idiot instead of her self-control coach. As it was, he barely managed a congratulatory smile and some generic words of encouragement.

Fortunately, the moment passed before he succeeded in making a complete fool of himself. The next part of their practice session was the most dangerous. In order to practice turning off the visions, Heather needed to learn to turn them on at will. That meant having her focus on how it felt just before she had succumbed to her past hallucinatory experiences.

Their only goal for now was to have her practice stopping the visions as they began. Mark had Heather seat herself on the couch where he could watch her closely, promising to wake her from her trance if she didn’t bring herself back within one minute. She nodded that she was ready, then inhaled deeply, letting her breath out slowly. As Mark watched, Heather’s eyes acquired a faraway look, as if she was no longer in her living room but was looking out over a distant landscape.

Mark glanced at the second hand on his watch. When he glanced back up, deep lines of anxiety etched themselves across Heather’s beautiful face. Another quick glance at his watch showed that less than fifteen seconds had passed. There was no way he was going to let her go through a full minute of whatever was scaring her so badly.

Mark had just reached out to gently shake her shoulder when he saw the change. A look of peaceful bliss replaced the worry lines as her breathing slowed and steadied. With a gentle smile, Heather touched his hand, her eyes once again fully alert to his presence.

“I’m okay. It worked.”

Mark suddenly realized that he was the one who hadn’t been breathing, something he remedied with a gasp of relief. “Wow. The look on your face scared the crap out of me. It was so intense I was afraid you weren’t going to be able to snap out of it.”

Heather sat up. “It was so hard to remember that what I was seeing wasn’t real. Once I was able to think of that, remembering the meditation was easy.”

“Can you remember what you were seeing without slipping back into the vision?”

Heather nodded. “Jennifer was there.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure. She was doing something with her mind. Then she looked at me and grinned. Something in that look spooked the hell out of me. That’s when I remembered to try to bring myself back.”

“Well, at least that worked.”

Heather’s smile returned. “I think it’s going to take quite a bit of practice to get good at going in and out.”

As she tried to stand, her legs wobbled and she would have fallen had Mark not been there to steady her.

“You okay?”

Heather straightened. “I think so. Just got a little lightheaded for a second. That must have taken more out of me than I thought.”

Seeing the concern on Mark’s face, she laughed out loud. “Mark. I’m really okay now. You can let go.”

Mark released his grip on her arm. “Okay. I think that’s enough practice for today.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy until I get the hang of this.”

The sound of the garage door rising caused her to put a finger to her lips. “Not a word to Mom and Dad. They’d never go for this.”

“What’re you going to do about your meds?”

“Doctor Sigmund has them watching to ensure I take the pills. I’ll have to fake swallowing them.”

The conversation was interrupted by Gil McFarland’s entry into the house, grocery bags in each hand.

“Hello, Mark. How’d the study session go?”

“Hi, Mr. McFarland. I think we’ve got it down pretty well.”

“That’s good,” Mrs. McFarland said as she followed her husband into the kitchen. “Biology tests can be tough.”

Mark helped carry in the rest of the groceries and then excused himself. For once, Mrs. McFarland did not invite him to stay for dinner.

He found his mom and dad watching television in the living room, an old
Bonanza
rerun. Mark had seen this one, the episode where Hoss and Little Joe thought they had found Leprechauns on the Ponderosa. It was one of his favorites. Seeing that his parents were chuckling at a particularly hilarious sequence, Mark resisted the urge to ask about dinner and made his way upstairs.