The Ashes of My Soul, page 35
Andreas continued. “We also have the psionic disruptors, which you assure me will be extremely useful. Your mother will also be able to issue conflicting orders and cause disruption within their ranks.”
“What? That’s crazy, they’ll jump on her as soon as they figure it out!”
“Yes, but she volunteered.”
“She’s crazy, then.”
“The Establishment’s reliance on centralization and rapid response will be cut off when their network is down. I have also created a variant of my second generation disruptor with USB connectivity. If they are plugged into a computer connected to the Establishment network, we can activate them remotely, further confounding their communications.”
“This sounds like we’re going to have a distinct advantage,” I said.
“At first,” Andreas said. “Once the initial shock wears off, they will have secondary protocols in place. Cory and his team have been invaluable in studying likely responses. However, there is one additional confounding factor.”
“Shade,” I said.
“Wrong. Alistair,” Absynthe said.
“He will be at the center of their defenses,” Andreas said. “While Shade will be hunting you. Everything else is unimportant in comparison. It is a race to see if you can capture Alistair before Shade captures or kills you. While it may not result in our immediate victory, it will at the very least cause the Establishment forces to consider standing down.”
“Great,” I said. “No pressure.”
My friends all looked at each other. Drew and Max both gestured at Jess. “Seriously? Me?” she asked. “Fuck you guys.”
“You lost at rock-paper-scissors,” Max said. “Accept it.”
“You were cheating.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“Your eyes were fucking glowing!”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Jess approached me and held her laptop out. “We didn’t know if we should show you this, to be dead honest. It’s going to fuck with your head and I’m sorry. I think you need to know, though.”
I took the laptop with a growing sense of dread. If Jess was apologizing ahead of time, it had to be bad. “What am I looking at?”
“Open up the audio file I have selected. Ripley likes to record important conversations.”
I sat down on the couch and opened the file. The two voices were immediately recognizable.
“Your studies are going well, then? Our friends at the Illuminati are treating you well?” Alistair asked.
“Quite well, sir. It’s a jolly good time over here.”
Alistair laughed. “I see you are picking up British mannerisms.”
“Just trying to fit in.”
“Are you looking forward to returning home?”
Nikki sighed. “No. I’m not looking forward to seeing him again. There’s unfinished business between us, and to be blunt, you’re the cause.”
“Surely not!”
“You’re the one who sent me here when I couldn’t keep up the illusion.”
“It would cause difficulties, Nicole. You understand.”
“I understand, but I don’t like it.”
“As long as you accept it. You’ll be returning in two weeks.”
“Two weeks? I thought I had more time.”
“Circumstances have changed. Will you be all right? I do feel awkward, asking you to leave him in another’s care for so long.”
Nikki sighed again. “As long as we’re together for his first birthday. Can you promise me that?”
“I can.”
“Thank you, Alistair.”
“Are you going to tell his father?”
“No, I don’t think so. Ian is more mine than his. No, I don’t see any reason to tell Kevin at all.”
“I hoped that would be your answer. I shall see you in two weeks, then.”
“All right. Thanks for checking on me.”
“Quite welcome. Give my love to the baby.”
“I shall, sir. Good night.”
If I hadn’t been sitting on the couch, I’d have ended up on the floor. Jess had to catch her laptop as it tipped out of my hands. The world seemed to tilt and I pressed my back into the couch cushions. My throat was tight and I could barely choke out any words. “Did you listen to it?”
“Yeah, we did.” Jess sighed and sat back on the floor. “I don’t know what to say. Congratulations, maybe? You fucking dumbass, maybe? Don’t stick it in the crazy unless you’re using protection.”
I covered my eyes with my hands. Absynthe cleared her throat. “So, Kevin, you’re a father.”
“He’s a dad,” Drew said. “We were thinking about getting you a cigar, but decided to get a shitload of hard liquor instead. You’re going to need it tonight.”
“Kait’s out shopping for it now,” Max said. “Come on, cheer up, Big Daddy Kevin. There’s a silver lining here. At least you know your boys can swim.”
“Can someone murder him for me?” I asked.
I felt someone sit next to me and put their arm around me. I uncovered my eyes to see Jess next to me and Max in the background looking slightly miffed. “Hey. Kev. You had no idea?”
“None. None at all.”
“What about you?” Jess asked past me.
Absynthe took a moment to respond. “It was something we spoke about,” she said. “I didn’t encourage it, but I didn’t discourage it either. Alistair had made it clear it wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“Why the fuck would he do that?” Jess’s outrage was right in my ear and I leaned away. “Shit, why? That girl is fucked up even more than I thought.”
I covered my eyes again. Tears were threatening to leak and I didn’t know why. Maybe this was her way of getting back at me. “God, I’m an idiot. I thought she was controlling her body to not get pregnant, not the other way around?”
“Wait, women can do that? Absynthe, are you telling me you can be on psionic birth control? Shit, now I know why my sister never complains about her period.”
“Too much information,” Max said.
I heard footsteps on the stairs and looked to see Andreas heading up. Jess squeezed my shoulder to bring my attention back to her. “Hey. Speaking of my sister.”
“I have no idea what I’m going to tell her.”
“The truth, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. You’re sleeping with my sister, we all know that much. Are you being as careful with her as you were with the queen of all bitches?”
Max groaned and slapped his hand across his face. Another pit was opening in my stomach. “I was going to talk to her about it the other day but it slipped my mind.”
“You know she wants kids, right?” Jess asked. “And she’s been a little odd lately. Distracted. Bathroom emergencies. You know.”
“No, I didn’t notice, but come on. She would tell me if she stopped.”
“Stress does things to a woman’s body.”
Absynthe chose to chime in at that moment. “She’s been under a lot of stress, hasn’t she? The attack at the dorm, the summer trip you two took, everything I slept through. It doesn’t take much to throw the cycle off and it’s easy to overlook.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Yeah.” Jess sighed and turned to give me an awkward side hug. “I think we’ll need to congratulate you on this one.”
“Where the fuck is Kaitlyn with my alcohol.”
Chapter Twenty Three
“Kevin?” My mom stared at me over her desk. “I can smell you from here. Can’t it wait till after you shower?”
I nodded and stepped into her office, closing the door behind me and leaning back against it. I’d cleaned up a little after spending the night in the basement of the safehouse. I’d woken up on a couch, my clothes stained and a handful of empty bottles scattered around the floor. The hangover was indescribable, but I’d been able to burn away most of the pain with a touch of biokinesis. I might have still been a little drunk when I left, because instead of heading back to the dorm to finish sleeping it off, I headed right for my mom’s office. “Sorry. I know I’m a mess.”
“Are you drunk at this hour of the morning?”
“Maybe a little, but I wish it was a lot more.”
She pointed at a chair. “What’s going on? This isn’t like you.”
“Make sure you’re sitting down,” I said as I lowered myself into the chair.
“I’m sitting already. Why? Some sort of surprise for me?”
“You’re a grandmother.”
“How surprising.” She rolled her eyes and fanned her face. “Imagine that. I think I may faint. How could you do this before you’re married? Are you sure you’re ready to be a father? This is so surprising, I’m so shocked.”
“Mom, listen to me.”
She waved me off. “Don’t worry about it. There are plenty of wedding dresses able to hide a baby bump.”
“Mom, seriously, listen.”
“I’m surprised it took this long. Did you just find out?”
“Yes, and you need to listen to me. I didn’t say you’re going to be a grandmother. I said you are one.”
The fake surprise was replaced with actual surprise, then her eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you cheated on Sarah.”
“No!” I leaned forward and tried not to shout. “No cheating. No one night stands.”
“Who, then?”
“Nikki.”
Her face drained of color and she leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and sighing. “Fuck.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“This has Alistair’s fingerprints all over it.” She opened her eyes and leaned forward again. “Tell me everything.” I flicked on my psionic disruptor and gave her the short version. She closed her eyes again halfway through.
By the time I finished, I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. “I knew you’d be upset, but I didn’t think you’d be this upset.”
“Absynthe should have known better,” she murmured.
“Absynthe was closer to her at the time.”
“You know what Alistair’s goal is, right?”
I shook my head. It hadn’t been on the list of discussions last night, not that I could remember most of the discussions. “Not unless it involves putting me off balance.”
“The child is the backup plan.”
My mind went blank. I shook my head to force a mental reboot. “Not following.”
“You were the fourth generation in Project Threshold. You have most of the genetic expressions for psionic power, without the usual limitations. That doesn’t mean we were the only family in the program.” She let that sink in for a moment. “Nicole Wainwright was half a generation behind.”
“Half?”
“Her parents are third generation, like me. They aren’t aware of the fact, but they’re first cousins.”
I blinked a dozen times in quick succession. “You’re kidding me, right? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It was experimental. First cousins aren’t a significant danger in terms of inbreeding, if that’s what you mean.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me she was also in the project?”
My mom shook her head. “It didn’t matter? We thought you already knew? I can’t speak for others, but it never crossed my mind to tell you because I never thought it was important.”
It made sense. Shade had said there was a backup plan, long ago, when we’d first thrown down. It hadn’t meant anything to me back then and it’d never crossed my mind since. “So Nikki was kind of a backup. Alistair said Threshold ended, though.”
“It officially ended when you awakened. That doesn’t mean all the work behind it was packed up and put away. You or Nikki having a child could result in a psion stronger than either of you. I’m certain someone checked your compatibility and discovered if you had a child together, they’d inherit the best of both of you. Especially if she complied with the only child theorem.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “So, the kid’s got more potential than me.”
“In theory. Even if they have the correct genetic expressions, until they’ve awakened to their power it’s impossible to know what they’re capable of.”
“Do you think that’s why Alistair and Shade disagree on what to do with me?” Chills were still crawling up and down my spine. Alistair probably wanted me alive as leverage. Shade probably wanted to discard me and start over.
My mom started to respond, but then her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and flicked a hand at me. “Have to take this. Go shower, please. We’ll talk later.”
I headed back to the dorm with mixed feelings, but one thought kept returning to the forefront. She hadn’t told me. It wasn’t as if I wanted kids with her, but I’d always thought if something happened, we’d at least discuss it. She’d hidden it from me. She’d done it at Alistair’s orders. She’d even fled the country.
Those thoughts threw a hitch in my stride. If she’d done it on orders, what else had she done at his orders? More importantly, was she still acting on his orders? What if she had been hiding in his office yesterday on purpose? Alistair had seemed surprised, but the old man was the best liar I’d ever met. I followed that train of thoughts as I continued my walk uphill. She wasn’t lifting anything from my mind, but she had screwed with Kaitlyn’s mind. Had it been at Alistair’s orders?
If she had screwed with one person’s mind, what if she had messed with someone else’s? I grabbed my phone. “What’s up, dude?” Drew asked as he picked up.
“Get everyone in Andreas’s room, as soon as possible,” I said, breaking into a trot uphill. “I don’t care what they’re doing. Sleeping, showering, fucking, get them together. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Any reason I should give them?”
I hesitated. I didn’t think there’d be a trigger, but I didn’t want to risk it. “Emergency meeting.”
“Got it.” Drew hung up and I switched to an easy jog.
In five minutes, I was stepping through the door to Andreas’s room and wiping a bit of sweat from my forehead. Max and Jess were hanging out on the couch, craning their heads back to look at me. Drew, Andreas, and Kaitlyn were sitting at the table. All the conversation died as I stepped in. “Shall I turn on a disruptor?” Andreas asked.
“No,” I said. “I need you all to close your eyes. I might have overlooked something stupid.”
Kaitlyn was the only one who appeared to get what I meant. Her eyes widened and she touched her temple, but then her hand dropped and she closed her eyes. Once everyone followed suit, I tapped my power. Using a light touch was harder than usual. Everything I’d done lately was heavy handed. I wasn’t too great at the mental stuff anyways. Ian would be. Like his mom.
I shoved that thought aside and started with Kaitlyn. She’d been checked over heavily by myself, Absynthe, and Star, so I already knew what traces to look for and she wasn’t showing any. I moved on to Andreas and Drew. Neither of them were affected by anything. I switched to Jess and Max.
“Shit.” I said it as quietly as possible, but the room was quiet enough for everyone to hear regardless.
“What?” Max asked. “Did you find something?”
He was manifesting a bit of power to watch what I was doing after he caught on, but he wasn’t my focus. Jess was. There was a tiny loop in her mentality, a tiny compulsion. It was easy to overlook or dismiss as a transient thought or personality quirk. “Follow my thread,” I said to him. “Do you see what I’m looking at?”
His power threaded its way to her mind along with mine. “I think so? That little dip and swirl?”
“That shouldn’t be there.”
“Are you sure? She does have a sick and twisted mind in general.”
“I feel like you’re talking about me.” Jess punched sideways at Max, but he’d already moved far enough away for her to miss. I flicked the twist out of her mind and she took a deep breath. “Did you do something?”
“You can all open your eyes,” I said. “And you can all call me an idiot.”
“Why?” The question came from multiple people, but Jess twisted in her seat to look at me.
I flicked my psionic jammer on. “Nikki,” I said to her.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, shit. Shit! Fuck!” She shook her head and grabbed her temples. “Oh, no. What did I do?”
I looked at everyone else and tried to keep calm. “I never thought Nikki would fuck with more than one person’s mind. She put a compulsion in Jess’s mind to relay information to her.”
“Every week,” Jess said. Her face was more pale than normal. “Every week, she’d text me, late at night. I remember now. She texted me and we’d either talk on the phone, or she’d come to the room, or we’d meet up somewhere else. Always switching it up. She’d ask me questions about you, most of the time. She wanted to know how to get in your head.”
“She succeeded,” Max said. “Didn’t she?”
I nodded. The bitch had been Alistair’s tool and she’d been relaying things to him the whole time. “I bet she’s been asking about Absynthe, Todd, and things relating to our revolt.”
Jess nodded. Max had a hand on her shoulder and I could sense her misery even without my powers. “She asked about Absynthe and about Todd, yeah. Nothing about the other part. Shit, she knows Absynthe’s alive.”
“And she’s been telling everything to Alistair,” I said. My temper was rising once again. “Shit. Almost everything’s compromised. Does she know where the safehouse is?”
Jess shook her head. “Never asked. I don’t remember it ever coming up.”
That was a small blessing. Alistair would have wanted to know those things, so it sounded like Nikki was acting somewhat independently. It was almost worse. She was selling us out of her own volition. Even if she hated me, even if she didn’t consider any of us to be friends anymore, we had been once. She knew us and she was going to get us all killed.
“Dude, what do we do?” Drew asked.
