Tormented (Evolution Series Book 2) (16 page)

“I don’t know.”

“If she’s alive, then I should be able to transport us to her,” I said with a catch in my voice. I feared that maybe it was all part of “the game.” Maybe my mum really was dead, and the psycho had just created the whole perception that she was alive to mess with my head.

“Can you teleport to dead people?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.” But there was no time like the present to test that theory.

The only person that I knew who had died was Chelsea’s father. I closed my eyes and thought of him, but I didn’t go anywhere. My feet remained planted on the pier. “I guess that’s a no.”

Tears started streaming down my face. I didn’t even know if my mum was dead or alive… again.
That
friggin
’ asshole was trying to mess with my head, and as much as I hated to admit it, he was succeeding.
I just wanted to crawl under a rock and not come out for the next fifty years, but even that wouldn’t solve my problems because the asshole would still be alive and probably have more sick plans for me.

Aiden wiped away the tears on my cheeks with his thumbs. “We’ll figure this out.” He kissed the top of my head.

“I might go see if Kai has found anything on the disc,” Lucas said. He looked more than a little uncomfortable with my display of emotion. Actually, he looked like how I would normally react to an emotional basket case. Lucas disappeared without disagreeing or telling me that I was wrong, which only went to prove he was exactly like me in that regard.

“Hey,” Aiden said, pulling back. “You’re entitled to a few tears with everything going on.”

I forced a smile. “I’m lucky you’re not like Lucas then, aren’t I?”

“Yep. You’re also lucky that I can fix it, too.” Aiden sent his calming endorphins my way.

Once I’d had my fill and my tears were once again locked away where they should be, Aiden and I transported to Kai to see if there was any news about what was on the disc.

CHAPTER 15

Kai leaned back in his chair, staring at the computer screen in Anna’s study. I didn’t dare look at what was on the screen. He wasn’t able to find any traces on the disc that might give us a clue as to
who
had created it or the location of the filming. What he was able to confirm was that at the time of the taping, my mother was indeed still alive.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Kai leaned forward and switched off the screen. “Well, if your mum is one of us, then she must be still alive, but in a state of unconsciousness.”

Nathan, who was sitting on the side of the computer desk, added, “Also, the blood would have clotted within a few days if she was dead, and there would be no way that he would have been able to draw the blood if that was the case.”

I twisted my hair up into a bun. “Then why can’t I transport myself to her?”

“We’re still trying to work out how you do that one anyway,” Nathan said.

“So you don’t know how or why?”

“Nope. You have us all completely stumped on that one.” Kai gave me an amused grin.

I sighed. “Great.” Why was it that when it came to my abilities, I seemed to break all the rules, yet I couldn’t master the simple ones that came so easy to all of the others?

“So what do we do now?”
Aiden asked, sounding frustrated.
“We can’t just sit here and wait for him to make his next move.”

“Maybe it has something to do with brain activity,” Lucas muttered.

“Huh?” I asked.

Lucas got up off the couch. “Well, when you tried to teleport yourself to your mum, it didn’t go so well. And then when you tried to teleport to the grave of your friend Chelsea’s father, that didn’t work either. So what I’m thinking is that there may have to be some sort of brain activity for you to connect to.” He paused to take a deep breath. “And I think I know a way to prove my theory.”

“How?” Aiden and I asked in unison.

“All you have to do is try to teleport yourself to someone who is officially brain-dead.”

“But I don’t know anyone who’s brain-dead.”

“You don’t need to know the person. There are thousands of people around the world who are attached to machines to preserve their lives, and I’m pretty sure there would be at least one in the local hospital.”

Lucas’s theory did sound pretty convincing, but it wasn’t as if I could just walk into the hospital and be able to get past all the security so I could meet a “brain-dead” person.

“Um, I think you’re forgetting that we can make people do whatever we want them to do,” Aiden said.

Subconsciously, I had put that to the bottom of my
thoughts
as I still didn’t feel comfortable with it. And I still had my suspicions that I had been manipulated more than just that one time Anna had confessed to, and the times Aiden had taken away my pain.

“For the millionth time, none of us have ever done anything else to you,” Aiden said, sounding exasperated. His green eyes were once again filled with hurt.

I turned to Aiden. “I’m sorry, I just have this feeling. I’m not saying that you’ve done it to me; I’m just saying that I think at some point, someone, maybe even my mum, may have done something to me.”

Kai cleared his throat. “Maybe this is a conversation you should be having somewhere where we don’t have to listen to it.”

“Sorry,” I said. “So where were we?”

“Lucas was just telling us about his theory,” Nathan said.

“Oh, yeah.” I thought back to what we had been discussing. “So where are we going to find someone to test this on?”

Kai flipped on the computer screen. “Just give me a sec, and I’ll tell you exactly where.” His fingers began moving at lightning speed.

I leaned over the desk to look at the screen. “What are you doing?”

“In laymen’s terms, I’m hacking the surrounding hospitals’ databases, looking for a guinea pig.”

“Oh,” I said quietly. It sounded so horrible to use someone like that. I knew the person wouldn’t actually be aware that I was testing on them, but if their families found out, I was sure they wouldn’t be very happy.

“Don’t worry. Their families won’t find out,” Aiden assured me.

Kai abruptly stopped typing. “Okay, we have two on life support down at Royal United. There is forty-eight-year-old Jennifer
Albian
in Room 4B who was admitted into the hospital after a severe car accident two weeks ago. And we also have fifty-two-year-old Alexander Thomas in Room 4D who was a victim of a hit and run, but he’s been on life-support for the last two years. His family refuses to give the okay to pull the plug.”

“So I guess Alexander is our man,” I said. Unlike the girl, Alexander’s family probably wouldn’t still be at the hospital all the time. They had probably all gone back to living their own lives, but still remained hopeful that he would just wake up one day. So Alexander was the safest bet for us to get in and out without anyone noticing.

There was a knock on the door before
Berny
entered the room. “Lunch is ready,” he said, sounding more down to earth. Ever since I’d called him out on his fake properness, he had lost his polished English accent. I liked him better already.

“What’s for lunch?” I asked.

“You’ll just have to wait and see.” He turned around and left the room.

Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to wait long. I looked at Kai and Nathan. “Are we finished here?” My stomach growled, showing just how hungry I was.

Nathan hopped off the desk. “We can finish discussing the details of this experiment over lunch.”

The five of us transported to the dining room. With so many people eating a meal at one time, the casual meals table just wasn’t large enough. Anna and Dave were already there, digging into the food. Bernie had prepared an assortment of dishes. There was a plate of salmon steaks to be served with steamed Asian greens. There was also a roasted leg of lamb—probably just big enough for Kai—surrounded by roasted potatoes, carrots, and pumpkin.

Kai reached for the leg of lamb. “If you insist.”

Anna slapped his hand. “Stop being a pig.”

By the time we had finished our meal, it was decided that Aiden, Lucas, Nathan, and I would head straight over to the hospital. Kai was going to be responsible for creating a short in the hospital’s surveillance system so that we could transport in and out without being caught on camera.

We didn’t have to worry about not being able to transport directly into the hospital because Lucas had previously visited a ward just down the hall at the beginning of summer to see a friend who had pneumonia. Lucas transported the four of us to a little out-of-the-way alcove, near where his friend had stayed. The familiar hospital smell wafted through the air. It didn’t seem to matter what country I was in, all hospitals had the same
odour
about them.

The surveillance systems were already down, so I quickly jumped on Aiden’s back so we could move at a speed too fast for the human eye to see us until we reached Room 4D. I couldn’t wait until I was able to move that fast so I wouldn’t have to have him carry me—not that there wasn’t something a little hot about having my legs wrapped around his waist, but it wasn’t the time for feeling that way.

Once we were sure Alexander didn’t have any visitors or nurses with him, we transported ourselves to the other side of the closed door to his room. Alexander lay motionless on the bed. The machines keeping him alive were attached to just about every part of his body. There was also some sort of air-pressured pad under his legs, making them slowly rise and fall.

“That’s to try and keep circulation and muscle mass in his legs,” Nathan said, responding to my thoughts. Apparently, Nathan had done a stint of being a surgeon a few years back, so he had the right knowledge that we needed to perform the experiment without harming or killing Alexander.

I took a deep breath. “Right, let’s get this over with.”

Nathan walked over to the bed and placed his hand on Alexander’s arm. A second later, both of them disappeared. Nathan had come with us to reattach Alexander’s tubes and plugs to electricity in a vacant room in a location in the hospital I wasn’t privy to. If the test was going to work, I couldn’t have any prior knowledge of where the room was or anyone that I knew to be there with him.

A couple of minutes later, Nathan reappeared without Alexander. “All good to go.”

I closed my eyes and pictured the man Nathan had just taken away. I pictured his almost anorexic body, his salt-and-pepper hair, and all the tubes that were attached to his body. But I didn’t move. I wasn’t able to transport myself to him. Lucas had been right in thinking that I needed to be able to connect to someone’s mind in order to transport myself to them without knowing their location.

Nathan scratched the side of his jaw. “Why don’t the three of you head back now? I’ll make sure everything is back to the way it was.”

“Thanks, Nate,” Lucas said, and the three of us transported back to Aiden’s house.

CHAPTER 16

Mid-afternoon, Aiden and I were sitting on the pier with our legs dangling over the edge. At low tide, the water was a good fifty
centimetres
below our feet. We had been out there for an hour while I tried to master the skill of blocking everyone from hearing my thoughts, and I wasn’t going to go back inside until I had done just that.