The Unseen Trilogy (51 page)

Swallowing hard, I tried to keep my cool. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He glared at me, and his tone turned so cold, I was surprised I couldn’t see his breath. “Don’t lie to me. I can smell a liar from fifty yards away. Call it one of my talents.”

His talents? He was a one-man lie detector in addition to being able to read minds? Well, all bow down to the great and powerful Oz
,
I thought, secretly hoping he heard me.

“Tell me, what are your other talents? Maybe we should be exploiting them for your campaign.”

“I believe you know full well what they are, not to mention who I am.”

“You believe? Shouldn’t you know without a doubt? Seems to me your talents are less impressive than they should be given that you’re the leader of the Potestas.”

His smile was vicious. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He took a step toward me, and the circle around us got smaller. The air was close, and I struggled to keep my panic at bay. “How long have you known who I am?”

“I think part of me suspected it all along. Maybe a better question is do you know who I am?” I was getting antsy. This back and forth had gone on for too long. Someone was going to draw soon, and if I wanted to win, it needed to be me. All I had to do was find his mind—a task easier said than done.

“I know you’re a member of the Unseen, and a thorn in my side. And I know that I’m going to crush you, and the rest of your sad little organization, one by one.”

Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief. He had no idea specifically who I was.

“Now that we’re being honest with each other, tell me how you managed to get as far as you did. How did a little worm like you get so close to me?”

“With a little bit of skill and a lot of luck.”
No need to elaborate
,
I thought. If I didn’t make it out of here alive, at least he wouldn’t have any useful information. Of course, if he was as powerful as he believed himself to be, he could probably get everything he wanted out of me, whether I was willing or not. Still, I wasn’t giving him anything for free.

I glanced at the guard to Agusto’s right, and immediately wished I hadn’t. He was glaring at me so hard it was almost comical. The look in his eyes was what kept me from laughing. Stone cold and deadly. I found I had a hard time looking away.

“What gave me away?” I asked, still trying to find a way out of this as I tore my gaze away from the angry guard.

He chuckled. “You’re dumber than I thought, Mackenzie.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but my breath caught in my throat. He’d called me Mackenzie, not Joyce.
That lying sack of shit! He knows exactly who I am.

Anger and panic kept my heart racing as a smile spread across his face. “Yes. Amanda wore a wire at all times. I heard your entire exchange. Your slip up. Her realization of who you were. Her refusal to accept your offer of rescue. Her cowardly death. It was better than she deserved.” His last statement was so oddly matter-of-fact. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he meant it, and I didn’t want to take the time to imagine exactly what kind of end he would’ve given her.

“And now my little sheep has wandered back into the wolf’s den on her own.” He paused and his smile made me nauseous. “Although, I must congratulate you on keeping yourself hidden from the person who raised you. She should’ve known you inside and out. It seems Amanda was a bigger imbecile than I thought.”

“That’s a bit of a backhanded compliment,” I said.

Agusto nodded in acknowledgment, staring at me intently. I could tell it was a challenge, but I wasn’t sure I could be intimidated any further. I was already scared out of my mind.

The guard to Agusto’s right, the one who who’d been glaring at me only moments ago, cleared his throat. When I looked at him, his once-fierce glare seemed vacant. His expression was more relaxed. Confused, I turned back to Agusto, not wanting to draw attention to the guard’s apparent transformation. As far as I was concerned, he was one less person for me to worry about.

Not seeming to notice what was going on with the guard, Agusto continued to revel in his success in capturing me.

“You thought you’d come in here and expose me for the demon I am, hmm? That’s very heroic of you.” He turned and started walking toward the window, breaking our little circle. It gave me some space to breathe, to think.

“What do you plan to do with me now?” I asked, stalling.

“Oh…” He trailed off wistfully. “There are so many options. You could become my new Amanda, but I don’t think you’d allow yourself to become a prisoner to your fear, particularly since we tried imprisoning you once before. Your talents are so…extensive, I’d hate to waste them. But make no mistake, I will if you force my hand.”

“I believe you.” I may have gotten myself into some pretty deep trouble, but I wasn’t stupid.

He smiled broadly as he looked out the window. “Maybe you’re not as dumb as I thought.” His breath fogged the window as he looked out on the county’s monuments.

I followed his gaze. “Do you envision having a monument to your greatness out there some day?”

He laughed. It was a genuine belly laugh, not an I’m-humoring-you chuckle. “Of course not. This country will be too busy to spend time on such frivolity. In fact—”

The guard to his left cleared his throat, cutting him off. Agusto glanced at him, an annoyed expression on his face, before looking away. “In fact, I’m going to change the face of this nation in such a way—”

A third guard cleared his throat, and then a fourth. Finally, the fifth guard started all-out coughing. “I’m sorry, am I boring you, boys? Do you have something to say? Or do you just need a drink? Feel free to drink from the river, like the dogs you are.”

My gaze bounced between them. Were they signaling each other? If so, why didn’t Agusto know what they were doing? Upon further inspection, I realized they all shared the same vacant expression.

What the hell’s going on?
I wondered.

Before I could process anything, the original guard who’d glared at me took Agusto into a defensive hold, keeping his arms pinned behind his back.

“What are you doing?” Agusto bellowed.

“Now’s your chance,” the guard said, looking right at me.

Questions raced through my mind.
What if it’s a trap? What if they’ve designed this, and they plan on imprisoning me once I’m inside his mind?
But I couldn’t dilly-dally. I couldn’t waste this opportunity. Instead of voicing any of the millions of questions racing through my head, I shut my eyes, giving myself the chance to fully focus on the task at hand.

I was taking a huge risk by opening myself to the four other guards flanking me, but I had to put my trust in something.

Doubling down, I concentrated on breaking into Agusto’s head. He struggled against the guard, and I could distantly hear the other guards moving away from me—moving toward him. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’ll never work. I’m the leader of the damn Potestas. You can’t get into my head.”

I easily found the mind of the guard who was pinning Agusto, but he felt different this time, almost familiar.

“Hurry up, Mackenzie. Don’t waste any time.”

I could’ve just killed him. I eyed the guard holding Agusto, wondering where he kept his gun, but I decided against it. Agusto had too much information. We needed to know where the Potestas’ supply of Zero was being kept, where they planned to release it next, how big the organization was, and how deep it went. The questions were endless, and this one man held all the answers.

I made another effort to find Agusto. There was still only the void. “What are you, some kind of robot?” I said out of frustration. Agusto laughed, and I heard him stop struggling.

“You’ll never be able to find your way inside my mind.”

“Don’t bet on it,” I said, trying to think fast. The guard was so close to the void that I could almost feel it, feel
him
, but almost wasn’t good enough.

“You three, can you get closer to him?” I pointed to the three guards separating me from Agusto.

That left one standing at my side. “Maybe you should watch the door?” He nodded and walked stiffly to the door. That still left Amanda’s secret door unguarded, but it was a risk I had to take at the moment.

“Okay good. One on each side, please?” I asked the guards, and they positioned themselves around him.

Closing my eyes again, I tightened my focus. The void was so obvious now, but I had no idea how to penetrate it. With four minds on all sides of him, it felt almost like a black hole of nothing in the middle of so much activity.

As I got closer to finding him, I heard him start to struggle again. His laugh changed from confident to slightly nervous. “You’ll never find me. My defenses are flawless. They were created by the best readers in the world.”

“Created?” I asked, coming back to myself.

But the original guard holding him begged me to keep working. “We don’t have much time, Mackenzie. He’s just trying to distract you, and it’s working. Keep going.”

But the phrase bothered me. Why would his defenses have been created by some of the best mind readers in the world? I thought about Dr. Jeppe. His defenses had been created for him too, but his had been almost laughably bad. This was something different. It was a work of art, as far as defenses were concerned. To another reader, Agusto didn’t exist. How had he accomplished that? Or rather, how had someone else accomplished that for him?

And, more importantly, why would someone else need to accomplish that for the leader of the Potestas?

I looked at him, desperately flailing as he tried to escape the guards. “You’re not a reader.” It was a statement, not a question.

In that moment he stopped struggling and got very still. A smile crept its way across my face as I let that truth reveal him to me.

He was a fraud.

Tracy’s words came back to me one last time.
Reality is a fluid concept in the world of the mind. It’s real because your mind believes it to be.
His defenses weren’t real. Creative to be sure, but they were nothing but lies. And there was nothing inside of him with the ability to bolster them.

The truth spread away from me, like roots reaching for him, pulling away the void with its tendrils. “The truth will set you free, Agusto,” I said with a smile as I started to feel him.

Then, all at once, I knew everything.

I had always assumed the Potestas had existed for generations. But I was wrong. The Potestas had popped up fairly recently, started by a young Agusto Masterson and his best friend, a rather talented and sadistic reader gone rogue from the Unseen.

I watched as they slowly gained followers over time, ones like Washington, who staunchly supported their cause and justified their means to an end, and others like Amanda, who got in over their heads and became too afraid to leave. They made empty promises, meaningful threats, anything they could to attract supporters.

Agusto was extremely charismatic, as I already knew, but his friend wasn’t. He was creepy, and people shied away from him. Agusto felt they were losing too many readers to his attitude, so he approached him about adopting a softer approach. His friend refused. Agusto persisted, saying it was for the greater good, and implored him to think of their dream, their bigger picture.

They wanted so badly to overthrow the Unseen. They’d reprimanded Agusto’s friend for his sadistic ways, prompting his AWOL status, and he’d never forgotten or forgiven it. For him, taking over the world one step at a time was no more than bonus. It was necessary because of the number and variety of Unseen chapters across the world.

But Agusto disagreed. For him, felling the Unseen was no more than an excuse for him to gain the power he’d always wanted.

It ended in a fight, leaving Agusto’s best friend, the only person with whom he’d shared a meaningful relationship, dead. Somehow, it surprised me that Agusto didn’t seem to feel any remorse over the act. In fact, he seemed
pleased
that he wouldn’t have to share his empire with anyone else.

After that, I flashed forward a decade, maybe two, and watched him hatch the idea of Zero. He gave the project to Dylan Shields and their newest—and most promising—recruit, Amanda, who in turn recruited the members they would need to successfully complete the project. It was hard to see Amanda so full of life. She’d been so pumped, so excited about the new direction her life was taking.

But it all crumbled as I watched. He tortured her for information, trying to piece together how one of their most valuable assets had slipped through his fingers. He struggled to understand what it meant for him, and whether it would affect the success of his plan.

And I saw his plan laid out in front of me, like blueprints. He didn’t intend to stop once he was declared president of the U.S. After all these years, he was a patient man. Slowly but surely, he would extend his tentacles out into the world, taking it over country by country, until he had control of all the world’s resources. His terrorist tactics wouldn’t end with Zero. He would buy a weapons company to help fuel the wars in the Middle East—not only supporting, but also controlling groups like ISIS. And then he planned to take control of the world’s economy by bending the oil companies to his whim, driving the cost of gas up so high that no one would be able to afford to drive anywhere, halting transport of all kind until he said go. All in the name of bringing down the Unseen for a perceived wrong that wasn’t even his to claim.

It was a nightmare, a living nightmare. Once everything he knew was out in the open, I didn’t know what to do. Slowly, I came back to myself, but I almost collapsed right there. The urge to fall to my knees from total and utter hopelessness was overwhelming.

The guards looked at me, waiting, and I had no idea what to do. They were all still holding him, and Agusto was staring at me, knowing he’d been violated. His eyes were wide, frantic, and feral. But now that I knew him for who he was, his fear didn’t bother me a bit.

“I thought you hated liars,” I said. He didn’t respond. “You’re one of the worst liars of all. You don’t have any special talent, except maybe the power of deception.”

“Do you have what you need?” asked the guard who had restrained him first.

I nodded, and he reached around and took Agusto in a hold by the neck. Before too long, he collapsed into unconsciousness. Then, just like that, the three guards around him fell to the ground, as did the guard at the door, leaving the original guard the only one standing.

He was looking directly at me.