Mindspeak (38 page)

I couldn’t believe it. I actually saw
the spots that needed repair—the tiny holes causing the leaking of cerebral
fluid in the brain, thereby causing her state of unconsciousness. What would
happen when I healed Sandra Whitmeyer, the mastermind behind an army of cloned
healers? Was I destined for imprisonment at Wellington? A life of being forced
to play God for the mad scientists who killed my father?

Were Cathy, Dr. Wellington, Seth
and Sandra all conspiring with the IIA to control the clones who were just
beginning to learn about their abilities? Would I let them control me?

No, thank you.

I could hear Cathy tapping the
syringe against her palm. What would she do to me if I failed? Could I live
with myself if I succeeded?

I turned my attention to Jack,
picturing his brain in my head. It was perfect. Just like a picture from a
textbook. Except, by some miracle, I could see a substance binding itself to
the receptors of many of the neurotransmitters. Like Ambien, only stronger.

A chill started at the base of my
neck and traveled like an avalanche down my spine. I needed this boy lying in
that bed. He had become so important to me. A lifeline. What would he tell me
to do right now? My stomach clenched.

Think, Lexi.

Next, I pulled up the image of
Addison’s brain. It wasn’t her brain that captured my attention, but the
condition of her skull. A large, disfigured circle on the back of it was a
different color from the rest of the skull. Like it had been replaced with
artificial matter.

Jack
. He had healed her
other injuries—the skull, maybe—but not the brain. That was what Seth had told
me. Addison’s brain was nothing like the perfection I had just seen in Jack’s.
Addison’s brain showed two major contusions to the front and right sides.

A huge weight pressed down on my
chest. I forced my breathing to be steady and controlled.

“What is she doing? Is it working?”
Dr. Wellington asked. The natives were getting restless.

I kept my eyes shut tight. It was
decision time. I had seen the brains. I had no idea if I could heal or even
help any of them. Or what would happen to me if I did.

“Remember who she’s cloned from.
Who knows what she’s doing,” Cathy said with enough sarcasm to practically
break my concentration. “It goes against my better judgment to even allow her here.”

“She’s never tried this. Give her
time.” Seth was a walking contradiction. One minute he reminded me that I had
no choice but help his sister, and in the next, he protected me. Still, I
feared what his reaction would be when I failed to bring his sister out of the
comatose state—when he no longer needed me.

I blocked them all out and concentrated.
If I had any hope of staying alive, I was going to have to give them something
they wanted. If I had any hope of escaping, I had to go against the beliefs and
values I’d held firmly for most of my life.

Did I have to do it their way? Was
there another way? I may have been created with a purpose, but I also had a
choice. I would find a way to accept my fate and use it for good. Or I would
die trying.

I blocked everything out of my
head. All sounds. All smells. All visions. Except for Jack and Addison. More
specifically, I brought up their brains like I was viewing them on an X-ray
reading machine.

Then I honed in on the many
receptors inside Jack’s head, all coated with a substance—a drug—designed to
make him sleep and block me out. With my mind, I flushed that substance out of
his brain, through his body and into his stomach. There, like bad shrimp, it
churned until it had to be expelled.

Jack’s breathing changed from a
slow constant to a more rapid inhale and exhale. Even though I kept my eyes
shut, I heard the sound of liquid hitting the bed and the floor in front of him
as he projectile-vomited everywhere.

Cathy shrieked.

“Ugh!” Kyle shouted.

Jack gasped for breath. “What the
hell?” I suppressed a smile.

The smell hit me, playing with my
own gag reflexes.

Tightness began to creep up the
back of my neck. A slow fire ignited at the base of my head. I felt woozy.
Similar to how I’ve always felt when I mindspeak, but amplified.

Once again, I shut out everything
in the room that didn’t matter. If I had any hope of doing what I needed to do,
I had to concentrate.

I entered Addison’s brain having no
idea how to help her. I only knew I had to try. Like Jack’s, the receptors
inside Addison’s brain were coated with a substance that I assumed kept her
securely in a coma while the rest of her head injuries slowly healed.

Thinking that Addison might not
survive the violent throwing up I had just put Jack through, I decided I would
bypass doing anything with the foreign substance keeping Addison safely in
sleep.

Instead, I focused on the
contusions, massaging the larger one with my mind and willing the indentation
to the brain matter outward.

The outer rim of her brain began to
transform and smooth over. The contusion had all but disappeared when the
throbbing pain behind my eyes worsened.

I swayed. I reached out a hand and
steadied myself on the bed beside me. I wasn’t sure I could keep going.

“What is going on here? Why is Lexi
here, Seth?” Jack’s voice broke through my concentration. “Lexi, what are you
doing?”

“You can’t stop her now,” Cathy
said. “You’ll kill her.”

“How can you be sure this won’t
kill her anyway?”

“A risk we had to take.” I heard
the frigid temperature of Cathy’s words.

I tried again to shut out their
voices.

Lexi, can you hear me? You don’t
have to do this.

I did though. I couldn’t stop now.
Jack was going to help me escape tonight and leave him here. He never would
have asked me to heal this innocent little girl who was like a sister to him.

Now, he wouldn’t have to.

When I was nearly certain I wouldn’t
collapse from the throbbing in my head or the dizziness, I got to work on the
second contusion. Though smaller on the surface, it ran deeper. The tissue
beneath the surface was a dull gray color. Still, I managed to nurse the injury
while fighting the increasing feeling of nausea and blocking out the voices in
the room.

Slowly the concave area of the
brain pushed out. The tissue gradually took on a healthier color, similar to
the perfection of Jack’s brain.

The pain behind my eyes grew in
intensity. I gripped the sheet on the bed beside me.

“Lexi?” Jack’s voice was like a
soothing drug.

Skin brushed against my arm. My
eyes sprang open. Jack’s dark blue eyes were the first things I saw. The room tilted.
The walls seemed to close in. I stepped backwards to catch my balance and bumped
into a rolling cart. I reached for Jack, but missed him completely as my eyes
went fuzzy.

Both hands grabbed at air as I
slowly fell backwards. Jack reached for me, his eyes wide. It was too late. I
collapsed to the floor.

Jack kneeled beside me. I stared up
at him. “What are you feeling? What hurts? Do you feel sick?”

I blinked once. Twice. Too many
questions. My head was an exploding inferno. I grabbed on to his soaked shirt
and pulled him to me. His ear to my mouth. “I did it,” I whispered. “I healed
the damage to her brain.”

He pulled back. Instead of relief
and happiness, his face registered alarm. His eyes were huge. He gripped my
shoulders with each hand.

I opened my mouth to say something
else, but the words did not come. His face grew fuzzier until the entire room
faded to black.

~~~~

My eyes fluttered open. I stared up
at a white, tiled ceiling. I turned my head. I was still on the floor.

“Lexi, can you hear me?”

The voice. I recognized it from
recent dreams. I placed my palms on the cold floor and pushed myself up. I fully
expected to see the faceless Smoking Man. Instead, I saw Kyle. I reminded
myself that Kyle was not Smoking Man.

I focused on Kyle’s dark brown
eyes. Was I dreaming?

Instead of cigarettes, I smelled
something worse. I crinkled up my nose, and looked around. A disgusting yellowish-brown
substance covered the bed Jack had been lying in and the floor around it.

Dr. Wellington lay sprawled on the
floor. Out cold, it appeared. Cathy was lying in a fourth bed beyond Sandra.

“What happened?” I asked Kyle.

“Cathy tried to inject you with
something after you didn’t heal Sandra, but Jack turned it on her. She’ll be
out for a while.”

“And Dr. Wellington?”

“I punched him.”

Jack had Seth in a stranglehold,
pushed up against the wall on the other side of the room. “You promised you’d
get her out of here.” His forearm pressed into Seth’s neck.

“I couldn’t,” Seth choked out. “You
of all people know why.”

“Jack,” Kyle said, “Jack, we have
to go. I can’t keep this up forever.”

“Keep what up?” I asked, confused.

Kyle reached a hand to me. He
pulled me to stand. My legs felt funny. Weak and tingly. Like they were asleep.

I pushed my fingers into my thigh
and barely felt it.

Jack let Seth go, and Seth just turned
and stared at us, rubbing his neck where Jack had been pressing. Surprisingly,
he seemed to forgive Jack immediately. “I’ll give you as much time as I can,
but you need me here on the inside. Cathy and Roger need to trust me.”

Jack crossed the room. He reached to
brush hair out of my face and tucked the strands behind my ears. “Can she hear
me?”

Strange question. Why would he ask
that?

“Ask her.”

He raised a brow at me. I nodded.
My head felt strange. Tingly like my legs.

“She’s unconscious,” Kyle said. “But
I think I can direct her well enough to get us out of here.”

“Can you run?”

I shrugged.

“I need you to run. If we have any
hope of escaping, you need to run.”

Not giving me any more time to
deliberate, he grabbed my hand and pulled me through the door. The hallway was
long and white, like before. Very much like the first dream I ever had with
Jack in it. The night my dad was killed.

We ran together in that dream, too.

This time, Kyle followed close
behind.

When we reached the top of the
stairs, we took a hard turn to the right toward the parking lot.

“She left her backpack around here
somewhere. We need it,” Jack said to Kyle.

I turned. No one followed us. Not
even Seth.

“It’s behind the bush over there,”
I mumbled and pointed with my finger to where I knew we would find the bag.

Jack looked at me strangely, then
at Kyle. “Are you sure she’s asleep?”

“Positive. She’s not the only one
designed to see inside people’s brains. She’s in a state of non-rapid eye
moment, slow-wave sleep.”

We jogged toward the bush. The
campus seemed too quiet. My peripheral vision was slightly fuzzy.

“Will she do anything you tell her
to do right now?”

Kyle didn’t answer. They were
talking about me like I wasn’t even there. So, I was asleep?

Finally, Kyle did answer. “No. I
don’t think I could get her to hurt herself or others. But I could lead her
anywhere I wanted her to go.”

“Like the night she jumped into the
ice-cold swimming pool and forgot how to swim?” Jack glared at Kyle.

“Jack…” Kyle stood with me while
Jack rummaged behind the bush and came back out with my pack. “That wasn’t me.”

Jack dusted off the backpack and
tossed it over his shoulder. “You understand why I’m having trust issues right
now. Someone with a similar ability tried to kill her. If not you, then who?”

“I’ll do what I can to earn your
trust. We need each other. And we’ll figure out who’s inside her head.”

“I’m counting on that.”

Jack reached for my hand again.
Just as his fingers wrapped around mine, a loud, whirring noise sounded. An
alarm. My hands flew to my ears.

Both boys turned toward the noise. “Crap,”
Jack said. “We have to hurry.” He looked at me. “You hear me? I want you to run
as fast as you can.”

Instead of heading into the parking
lot, we took off toward the stables. We ran along the edge of the barn to the
far side then darted into the woods behind it, very close to the spot where
Jack had found me sneaking back into Wellington after discovering him at
Addison’s hospital bedside.

I did as I was told and ran. Trees
passed by us at rapid speed. I stumbled several times, but Jack steadied me.

Something tugged at the back of my
mind. We couldn’t go much further, but I didn’t know why.

Then I saw it. The electric fence.

I pulled on Jack’s hands. “We can’t.
It’s turned on.”

“She’s right,” Kyle said. “I can
hear the buzz.”

Flashlights darted through the
trees behind us. Dogs barked. We were being chased. It felt real, but at the
same time, I still thought I might wake up from a nightmare any second.

Jack pulled his phone out of his
back pocket. After dialing, he brought the phone to his ear. “We’re here.” He
stared at the fence, into darkness.

Through the shrubbery on the other
side, toward the road, I heard the motor of heavy machinery followed by the
sound of limbs crackling and small trees crunching. Bright headlights became a spotlight
on the three of us, coming straight for us. I gasped.

Jack pulled me further to the
right. I looked behind us at the approaching flashlights. The sound of barking
dogs rose above the commotion of the tractor.

It reached the fence and plowed
right through. Sparks flew as the tractor slammed into and tore down the fence.

Voices erupted behind us. “I see
them. Stop!”

“Let’s go,” Jack said to me. “Watch
your step.”

Flashlights lit our path by people
whose faces remained hidden to me.