Teek Page 27

  Worst was that reference to Jessica “vanishing” people. Having Prometheus and ASI to worry about was bad enough. But having to worry about someone else with paranormal powers, someone who wasn’t drugged into ineffectiveness—

  Allison could understand why so many kids, according to Zack, “won’t make waves.” Some of them weren’t even thirteen yet.

  She decided that she might, indeed, want to rock the boat. But only after she had a good look at the crew, and where the boat was headed.

  TWENTY ONE

  NAVARRO COUNTY, TX: Sunday October 31, 1999

  7:30 AM

  Allison dreamed again. All through the night she ran through the empty halls of Euclid Heights High School. She kicked up clouds of dust, stormed through empty classrooms, tore open rusted-shut lockers. All looking for a hiding place.

  At first she thought she was hiding from Chuck. But soon, as a dream panic gripped her, she realized that she was looking for Chuck. She had to find him.

  But Chuck was nowhere to be found.

  Eventually her search ended on the fire-stairs where it had happened. Chuck’s blood still soaked the concrete. The blood was still tacky even though the fire door was long rusted in a half-open position, and a pile of dead leaves rustled in a corner.

  Just as she’d lost her teek, now she’d lost Chuck.

  It should have pleased her.

  Instead, the loss terrified her. She collapsed on her knees and wept, allowing the leaves to blow over her body. Their rustling seemed to form a single whispered phrase, “it is time, this is the only time, it is time, this is the only time.”

  It sounded strangely like Chuck’s voice. She tried to call out, but the leaves filled her mouth. The whisper was cut off then by the screeching of the fire door slamming shut against the rust.

  The screeching went on forever…

  ◆◆◆

  … the screeching didn’t cease until Allison sat up in her bed. The sound was the infernal clock attached to her wall. More infernal in that it had no snooze alarm, and it reactivated the moment she tried to lie back down again.

  Her first coherent thought was, this is the only time.

  “Only time for what?” she mumbled. Her mouth tasted like leaves.

  Allison woke up further when she realized that there was really an aftertaste of leaves in her mouth. She swished her tongue around, expecting to feel the grittiness of munched foliage, but the only thing she found was the slightly icky sensation of unbrushed teeth.

  It scared Allison, because the taste didn’t go away. It was as real as the bed she sat on. She tried to convince herself that she was still dreaming. It didn’t work.

  Do people hallucinate tastes?

  Allison supposed people did, and she was sure that when they did, it didn’t represent anything pleasant.

  Before she had collected her thoughts enough to get out of bed, the clock on the wall buzzed again and, simultaneously, the door to her room slid open. The noise, the door, and the sudden light nearly made her tumble out of bed in surprise. It startled her badly enough to yank her blanket up to her neck, causing the tangled bedding to cut off circulation to her leg.

  As waves of phantom needles rippled across her sheet-tangled leg, a nurse walked into her bedroom. At least Allison assumed the woman was a nurse or some sort of orderly. The woman wore a familiar white coat, and a green-bordered name-tag which Allison couldn’t read in the darkness. The woman carried a tray.

  Allison watched the woman, frozen more now by the invasion of privacy than by fear. The nurse placed the tray on the end table under the clock and said, “Time for your medicine, Miss Boyle.”

  Allison noted the use of her last name. Perhaps her phone call had more far-reaching implications.

  She looked at the tray and wasn’t surprised to see a small Dixie cup of water, and a smaller paper cup containing a small yellow pill. She considered refusing, but she remembered Zack’s warning. If she didn’t take the pill, they’d shoot her up.

  If this promised to be a milder experience, she wasn’t going to tempt fate. She glanced at the nurse. The woman wore a benign expression, no visible sign that she was here to drug someone into subservience.

  Allison picked up the paper cup with the pill inside. “Do I have to take this?” she asked.

  “We don’t want you hurting yourself, or others by accident. We need to do this until you’ve had some training.”

  Allison almost voiced another objection but she knew it would be fruitless. Worse was the fact that there was some logic behind the nurse’s excuse. Unchecked, she had killed Chuck without knowing what she’d been doing. These paranormal abilities could be dangerous if they weren’t under control.

  Allison was convinced that the nurse believed this yellow pill was for her own good. She was also convinced that there were a couple of gorilla-sized orderlies waiting in the hall in case she was less than cooperative. She’d seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  Allison downed the yellow pill.

  The only immediate effect that Allison noticed was the disappearance of the leaf taste in her mouth.

  The nurse insisted on checking her mouth to make sure she’d really taken the pill. Allison endured it, however degrading it felt. The sooner she could get these people to trust her, the sooner she could find some sort of an opening that would get her out of this mess.

  At least, that was the theory.

  ◆◆◆

  Allison showered, dressed, and ate a depressing cafeteria breakfast. The only light point in her morning routine was the absence of the teek-shaped hole inside her head. Her teek still refused to work, blocked by the drugs she’d been given, but at least with the pill— opposed to the injection— the absence wasn’t a constant physical sensation. She no longer felt constantly on the verge of a migraine.

  She resented the fact that it made her more comfortable about the loss.

  When she returned to her room it was close to nine-thirty, and the clock was buzzing again. She looked at the clock with a visceral hatred. She could feel her teek try to ram through the drugged part of her brain. It was almost a reflex action, and before she could relax the effort, it drove a spike into her forehead as bad as any she had felt before. As bad as when she had lifted the Jeep. All of it was directed at the hateful-sounding clock.

  If her teek had been operational, the clock would have exploded. As it was, the clock remained unfazed. Allison had to grip the door frame for a moment. She did her best not to show the effort she had just undergone. People were watching. People were always watching. She couldn’t allow them to see anything suspicious.

  The clock continued to buzz, and Allison walked up to see what it wanted.

  Across the liquid crystal scrolled a message that she had an appointment with Mr. Stone today.

  “Mr. Stone?” Allison whispered. The head honcho wanted to see her. The maniac in charge of Prometheus. Allison assumed that she might meet the man eventually, but never this soon. She wasn’t ready.

  What was she going to say to the man who held her life in his hands?

  The display told her to go to the administration complex to meet her escort. Immediately.

  “I’ve read it. Would you stop that infernal buzzing?” Allison said into the air.

  On cue, the clock ceased its cacophony, but not before she had a chance to notice that the buzz had changed tone slightly. The buzz stopped with a static crunch, as if the speaker had popped.

  Allison was out of her room and halfway to the administration building before she thought that she might have done something to the speaker, even through the drugs.

  ◆◆◆

  The administration building was a cross-shaped five-story structure at the edge of the student-accessible area. The mirrored windows made it look like any other anonymous office building. The only things at odds with the architecture were the two boxes on the roof of the three wings facing the student area. The boxes appeared to be made of armored glass, and Alliso
n saw gun ports and armed guards moving around inside.

  Inside the building, next to the fountain that took up most of the lobby, Allison was met by Dr. Zendel. The doctor gave her a nervous smile. “I’m here to take you to Mr. Stone’s office,” she said.

  There wasn’t the condescending manner that had tinged her earlier speeches. Allison thought the woman had left the script she was comfortable with.

  “Lead on,” Allison said.

  She looks as nervous as I feel, Allison thought.

  The doctor walked off down a corridor deeper into the building. As they walked, she told Allison, “I’ve managed to arrange an appointment with your father and Miss Washington. It will have to be tomorrow after classes.” After a pause, she added. “We certainly don’t want you to feel intimidated, Al— Miss Boyle.”

  Allison didn’t respond. She kept her peace mostly out of a spiteful impulse not to do anything to make Dr. Zendel more comfortable.

  She led Allison through a long corridor, down a set of stairs, and through underground tunnels that must have passed far beyond the bounds of the administration building. The corridors definitely passed out of the blue-accessible area. The second door they passed in the administration building had been marked “green access only.”

  When they reached the elevator that was their apparent destination, they had gone from green to yellow.

  ◆◆◆

  Once in the elevator, Dr. Zendel had to offer her ID card to a reader next to the elevator’s keypad. That was when Allison noticed that her card was green-bordered, like most of the pseudo-medical staff she’d seen. Allison interpreted the doctor’s nervousness to mean that, in the normal course of events, she wasn’t allowed in this part of the complex.

  It was somewhat reassuring to see one of the staff as out of her depth as Allison was.

  Dr. Zendel didn’t press any buttons. It was the elevator, or some computer running the elevator, that decided where they were supposed to go. The doors closed, and the elevator rose. It went up two sub-levels and then proceeded to rise ten stories above ground. Allison thought that put her in one of the taller structures in the part of the PRI complex that looked like an office park.

  When the doors opened, they were greeted by a marble wall supporting a giant chrome logo of the Prometheus Research Institute, a stylized flame logo with the initials PRI underneath.

  The doctor led her off to the right, and Allison followed. The halls were expensive corporate chic, all marble, wood, deep carpet and brushed-chrome furniture. Dr. Zendel led her up to a glass wall with another card reader. The border— subtle but unmistakably one of the security labels— was red. If Allison was reading the colors correctly, this was two security levels away from what Dr. Zendel normally had access to.

  Allison noticed the doctor glance at one of the security cameras as she ran her green ID card through the reader.

  The door opened with a pneumatic hiss and Dr. Zendel was visibly relieved.

  They walked into the area beyond the glass and a male receptionist said, “Mr. Stone’s expecting you.”

  The doctor began to lead Allison down a corridor to their right, but the receptionist added, “Just Miss Boyle, doctor.”

  Doctor Zendel froze for a moment, apparently unsure of what to do. Allison looked at the receptionist.

  “Just down the hall, Miss,” he told her.

  Great, I get to face this guy alone. Nerves clutched her with a renewed strength. Even having Doctor Zendel with her would be preferable to going through this by herself.

  It took an effort to continue down the hall.

  Every few feet down the hall hung a painting on the wall. A sense of familiarity stopped her in front of one of the pictures. It had an Egyptian motif, golden pyramids and such against a galactic star-scape. Centered in the picture was a light-shrouded human figure with an animal’s head. “I’ve seen this,” she whispered.

  There were posters— if not of this particular work, then definitely this artist— hanging in the window of a New Age bookstore not far from Euclid Heights High.

  She stood there, staring at the picture until she decided that she was just delaying the inevitable. She turned and kept walking, but she kept an eye on the paintings.

  The pictures were eerie. The themes were old— old beliefs, old gods— but they were rendered with modern hands, in some cases with photographic realism. Looking at some of the portraits gave her the same sense of razor’s edge unreality that she got when she’d really concentrated on her teek.

  Slipped in among the shamans and the totems were some more traditional portraits. Portraits of people she had never seen. Little brass tags identified the subjects as Edgar Cayce, Nina Kulagina, Dr. J. B. Rhine… all people she was barely familiar with from scanning Mom’s book collection.

  The hallway ended at a heavy wooden door. After a moment deciding whether or not to knock, she sucked up her courage and pushed her way into Stone’s office.

  The first thought that struck Allison as she walked across the Persian carpet was, so many books.

  She had walked into a misplaced library. The room was a square, maybe twenty-five feet on a side, with twelve-foot ceilings. And three walls were bookshelves. All bookshelves, excepting the one gap where the door opened into the room. They were massive, glass-fronted, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves made of heavy dark wood. It was the most impressive library Allison had ever seen.

  “Finally,” came a voice from across the room. Allison tore her gaze away from the shelves and looked at Howard Stone. Huge and enigmatic, he faced her from beyond a desk.

  One of the paintings she’d passed had been a scene of the Easter Island statues transplanted whole to a lunar environment. Stone reminded her of that painting. His smile was hard, cold, and only as deep as the point of a chisel.

  “Sit down.” He motioned to one of a pair of massive red leather armchairs that faced his desk.

  Allison sat.

  The desk, and the wall behind him, didn’t fit the rest of Stone’s office. Most of the office seemed out of another century, a century of wood, leather and glass. Stone’s desk was white enameled metal with chrome trim, almost a bathroom fixture.

  The wall behind him, the only wall without bookshelves, was hidden by ranks of video monitors and electronic equipment that ran floor to ceiling.

  Stone stared at her across hands folded atop his cane.

  “You wanted to see me,” Allison said.

  Stone nodded. “Since before you were ever born.”

  “Ah… right.”

  He caressed his cane in a way that made her uncomfortable. “I’m sure you have questions. Don’t you?”

  Allison looked at him, “Other than what you’ve done with my father and Macy? No.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about them. They’re perfectly safe. I’m sure Dr. Zendel told you you’d meet them shortly— But perhaps you should let go of your old life.”

  “My old—” Allison was having trouble controlling her voice. Anger and fear were balled up in her stomach and her voice couldn’t decide between shouting and crying. “It’s my life. What gives you the right—?”

  “Please, I didn’t mean to upset you.” He made a small wave of his hand as if he was dismissing her emotions. The gesture only made her angrier. “But you should be ready to accept something new.”

  “What? Being the CIA’s latest mental weapon?”

  Stone laughed. It was a grating sound, much too loud, a sonic bludgeon.

  “I don’t see the joke,” Allison said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You really have no idea what Prometheus is. Do you?”

  “I think—” Allison thought of several things she could say, and rejected all of them. Finally, she said, “Why don’t you tell me?”

  TWENTY TWO

  NAVARRO COUNTY, TX: Sunday October 31, 1999

  9:45 AM

  “For me, it began when I saw the Apollo moon landing on TV.”

  Allison wanted to interrupt,
but the look in Stone’s eyes had a shiny cast that made her decide against interrupting him. It was the kind of look Charles Manson would give her.

  “Until then, I didn’t know the meaning of my life.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Stone wasn’t paying attention to her now. She had the feeling she was listening to a speech rehearsed many times, before many different audiences. Stone was physically imposing to begin with, and, as he spoke, he took on a presence that made Allison shrink into the chair.

  “At the end of the sixties, I was a billionaire several times over. None of it my own. My father had made my fortune, and by the time it had reached me, the money had its own life. It multiplied well enough without me. That left me a shallow, listless youth. By thirty years of age no word or deed of any consequence could be applied to me.

  “My peers didn’t think so. Through the latter half of the decade I was picketed and slandered by children not much younger than I. I was part of the military-industrial complex then.”

  You aren’t now? Allison thought. She didn’t have the nerve to speak.

  Stone squeezed his cane and Allison heard his knuckles crack. “I understood none of it. How, within a few short years, a generation so close to me had become so alien. It was as if the UFOs had landed and exchanged all the children.

  “When I saw the moon landing, I knew that was exactly what had happened.”

  Stone stood up. Allison felt a quite different fear now, the fear of being locked in a room with a crazy person. Stone seemed to notice the change in her expression. It was rote recognition, as if this was the point in the play where the audience drew back in shock. From the depth of Stone’s eyes, he could be talking to an empty chair.

  “Don’t dismiss me yet. You, of all people, have seen glimpses of the other world.”

  Allison nodded because she had no idea what he’d do if she didn’t.

  “Imagine my thoughts upon seeing the moon landing. I had cluttered my mind already with the teachings of gurus and mystics, disciples of this new generation I didn’t understand. And until the telecast, I had no understanding.”