The Ashes of My Soul, page 36
I clenched my fists and turned to the door. “We stop this bullshit, right now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Watch me.” I stepped out into the hall, turning the jammer off as I walked toward the room which had once been Lisa’s, and had been taken over by Nikki upon her return. I knocked once, twice, and when no one answered, I knocked a third time with a touch of my power. The door didn’t blow off its hinges, it exploded inwards in a hail of splinters.
“Holy fuck,” someone said behind me. I stepped into the room, my shoes crunching on debris. Anyone inside would be lucky to be alive. I’d almost killed her once before, an accident before I could control my powers. She’d gotten help then. I didn’t care if she got help now.
She wasn’t inside. There wasn’t anything inside. The room was bare and empty, a thin layer of dust on anything not stripped by the spray of wood. The standard desks were there, the dressers, the beds, but nothing else. Where had she gone? I stepped in, keeping my power tapped in case someone was lurking.
There was a flicker of power and I spun around. Professor Burke appeared in the doorway, right in front of a visibly shocked Drew. I dropped my power before I could instinctively slam him across the hallway. “My apologies, Andrew,” he said as he brushed himself off. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Would you please make sure no one investigates the noise? I need to speak to Kevin in private.”
“Uh, all right,” Drew said. He backed up and corralled everyone else.
Burke flared his power for a moment and the shards, splinters, and motes of wood began to draw back together. Within seconds, the door was back in place. It wasn’t going to hold up to scrutiny or even a strong knock, but it’d look fine for now. He swung it closed and faced me straight on. “Your mother suggested you needed a man to talk to.”
“A father figure?” I asked. He winced. “Sorry. She’s probably right. What did she tell you?”
He studied me for a moment. “Only that we should talk soon. I was getting out of my car when I felt that surge.”
“Blind teleport? Dangerous.”
“So was that surge.” He gestured around the room. “Whose room is this? Or, was?”
“Lisa’s, before it was Nikki’s.”
He stepped past me, over to one of the desks. The dust had been blown off this one and he put his palm against it. His eyes flickered to glowing green life. “I see. Her imprint is strong here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simple psychometry. Human thoughts can leave imprints on their environments, very slight, very difficult to read. A psion, though? One with a strong mental power, with something they think about often? I’m surprised you didn’t sense it from the moment you walked in.” He lifted his hand from the desk. “Would you like to sense it for yourself, or shall I save you the time?”
“I think I might break the desk if I don’t like what I sense.”
He smiled slightly. “Ian,” he said.
I stiffened. She’d sat at that desk and thought of him. How long ago had she abandoned this room? I’d never looked and it wasn’t like anyone kept track of her comings and goings. Burke looked at me and I couldn’t keep it from him anymore. “That’s our son’s name,” I said. “She kept him a secret from me. Alistair sent her to Europe to hide when she couldn’t hide the pregnancy anymore. She never told me. She never planned on telling me.”
“She loves him. Regardless of the circumstances.”
“I wouldn’t have let her raise him alone.”
His eyebrows rose. “I trust that’s something you’d prefer Sarah to never hear.”
“Damn right, Professor.”
He sighed and sat on the edge of one bed, gesturing for me to sit on the opposite one. “Mr. Parker, believe me when I say, I understand your pain, your sense of betrayal. I had a similar situation when I was younger.”
“What?”
“My daughter’s name was Delilah. Her mother named her. I didn’t know her name for years. I never even met her until she was six, maybe seven. It was a long time ago and it was only for a few minutes before her mother took her away again.”
“How did it happen?”
“Youth,” the older man said. “Her mother was a beautiful woman, I was smitten, we were both drunk, and she was leaving for graduate school the next week. We spent a few nights together before she left. I didn’t think much of it afterwards. Simply a fond memory.”
“What happened to your daughter?”
He shrugged. “What happens to all beautiful little girls? They become beautiful older girls, and then beautiful young ladies, and then they meet a wonderful young man.”
There was something off in his tone. He was being too dismissive, too blithe. “I don’t believe you.”
“No?”
“I’d keep closer track than that. Even if she didn’t know me, she’d still be my daughter, and I’d watch over her. You had your powers by then, right? You’d use them to watch over her.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right.” He looked toward the window. “I did watch over the years as she did become a beautiful young lady, who did meet a wonderful young man, who beat her to death one night.”
“What?”
“She died,” Burke said. “She made good choices in her life. I was proud of her. She lived her own life and if she wanted to find me, she could, and she would. I never knew the young man she married was capable of such things.” He snorted and continued to stare at the window. “I spent a long time teaching him the error of his ways. A very long time. He was a plant from a group that’s long since defunct, who decided I needed to learn a lesson about interfering with them.”
I didn’t know what to say. The unwritten rules were clear about civilians and family members being off limits, Alistair and Shade notwithstanding. “Defunct?”
He looked back at me with a silent smile.
I shuddered. “I guess we all have skeletons in our closets.”
“Some of our closets are larger than others.” Burke stood up. “Forgive me, Mr. Parker, but I think that’s as far as I can take it today.”
“That’s why you stay neutral, isn’t it?” I asked.
“It may be a contributing factor.”
“Do you have any other children? A family?”
He’d been walking toward the door, but froze in place as the question left my lips. He stayed silent for long seconds before responding. “Mr. Parker, for both your good and mine, I’m going to pretend you did not say anything just now.” I kept my mouth shut as he disappeared. I heard the door close quietly behind him.
I hadn’t meant to imply anything. I’d only been curious. If the circumstances hadn’t been what they were, I suspected I would have pushed him into Alistair’s camp. I leaned back on the bed and sighed. My wrists tingled as they pressed into the unused sheets and I tapped into my power. I’d almost never used psychometry, but now I was curious. Maybe Nikki had been thinking of something else while in bed. I pushed the dirty thoughts aside and tried to read the lingering imprint.
It didn’t take long. “Drew,” Lisa whispered.
My eyes watered. It’d been a long time since I’d heard her voice outside of my nightmares. Once my eyes were dry, I stood up and followed Burke out of the room. My friends were in the hallway, waiting outside Andreas’s door. “What’d he want?” Drew asked.
“We had a little man to man talk,” I said.
Max snickered, but he was the only one. “What are we going to do now?” Jess asked.
I pointed and we filed back into Andreas’s room. He turned a jammer on without asking and we all stood in a tight circle. “When’s the next time you’re supposed to talk to Nikki?” I asked Jess.
“Tonight or tomorrow night, I think,” she said.
“Tell her the truth about everything.”
“Everything?”
A smile crept onto my face. “She fucked with us, we’re going to fuck with her. You play right along with her until she asks you anything about our timetable. When she does, you tell her it’s planned for right after New Year’s, and that we’re even discussing pushing it back.”
“Double agent Jessica Kelton, on the job,” she said. A smile came to her face as well. “Anything else you want me to mislead her on?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t want her to think you’re lying. Assume she can verify anything you tell her. They might not believe you about the timetable, but we’re going to tell everyone different things. Everyone else, pick a date between December and February and stick to it. Don’t tell anyone what you picked. If someone calls you on it, be confused and tell them you heard something different. The Resistance will understand. They’re used to operational security.”
“When’s the actual kickoff?” Drew asked.
“That’s a good question,” I said. “I’m going to have a discussion with Star about it tonight.”
“Among other things, right?” Jess asked.
“Among other things, yes. All right. Get back to your normal lives, as normal as they are. If you run into Nikki, let me know when and where as soon as possible, but don’t confront her. Don’t talk to her. Don’t even notice her. We don’t want to spook her.”
Everyone nodded and we filed right back out of Andreas’s room. I headed straight for the shower. No one had commented on my smell, but I’d seen a few wrinkled noses. Once I was cleaned up, I headed for my bed and took a short nap. For once, no one interrupted my sleep. I burned the last remnants of the hangover away and promptly called Star once my brain was functioning again. I arranged a date for the evening and went right back to sleep.
I picked her up a couple of minutes early and we headed straight to a diner. I had no idea how the food was and I didn’t really care. My appetite was non-existent. By the time we sat down and got our water, Star had noticed something. She gave me a wry smile. “You’re brooding over something,” she said. “Out with it.”
I showed her the psionic disruptor I always carried with me, deliberately flicked it on, and then returned it to my pocket. “I don’t know if I’d call it brooding.”
“Distracted, then. Out with it.”
“Two things I need to talk with you about. One’s bad and the other’s worse, and I don’t know which one is which.”
She grimaced at me and took a sip of water. “All right. Go ahead.”
I flipped a coin in my brain and it came up Nikki. “So, you remember my dear bitch ex, right?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, I’m sure you can guess we slept together.”
Star leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands. “Shocking.”
“You know what can happen when people have sex, right?”
“I did learn about that in school, yes. So, either you have some nasty rotting disease which you’ve unknowingly passed on to me, which is extremely unlikely because I checked, or you knocked her up.” She smiled. “So?”
I lifted my glass of water to my lips and drank. I needed a glass of wine or three. “She hid it from me for a couple of months, and then she went to Europe. She said it was study abroad, but it was a cover story. She had a son over there. His name is Ian.”
“A son? Your son.”
“My son.”
“You’re sure?”
“It gets worse,” I said. “She did all of this at Alistair’s direction. The poor kid is a backup for me in case something goes wrong. Apparently she was part of the Threshold project as well. He might be stronger than me, and he might have more aptitude for the mental side of things.”
“That’s not really much worse.”
“It does get worse, but that leads into the other topic, and I want to eat first.”
She smiled at me and we moved into less dangerous conversational territory. She’d taken the news about Ian better than I’d expected. Maybe she was a little more jaded than I was. I put that line of thinking aside when the waiter came. One meal and two glasses of wine later, I felt sufficiently relaxed enough to open the other topic. “So, I said it gets worse.”
She’d only ordered a light meal and more water, and the first glass was already empty. She pushed the plate to the side and smiled at me again. “Go on.”
“Nikki did more. She compromised someone in our group and she’s been feeding information to Alistair. All the bullshit with her showing up to meetings with him, getting herself in trouble, it’s all fake. She’s been his lackey this whole time.”
“Who did she compromise?”
I swallowed hard. “Your sister.”
Star finally lost her composure and her eyes flickered blue, dangerously bright, but they faded almost as quickly and she winced. I was impressed she’d managed to manifest anything within the jamming area. “She compromised Jessy? Are you sure you don’t want me to tie her in a knot? Because I really, really want to.”
“She put a suggestion in Jess’s mind to answer all her questions during some late night meetings or calls. I’d never even thought to check.” I was still beating myself up over that. We weren’t supposed to touch normal people and she kept doing it. Granted, Jess was already involved, but it still didn’t justify her actions. “I removed it and we’re going to feed fake information to the bitch. Don’t worry, we’re not going to make it blatantly obvious.”
“Oh, you’re good at subtle.”
“Like a tank, I know.” We both grinned. “She’s going to tell the truth about everything except one particular aspect of our planning. The launch date. She’s going to claim it’s in January or even February.”
Star frowned. “So she’s faking that we’re pushing it back a month?”
“Yeah. Other people are making up their own dates, leaning toward it being later. I want it to seem like we’re disorganized, like he’s succeeding at slowing us down.”
“He is, you know.”
“Well, I want him to feel like he’s one or two steps ahead of us.”
She nodded. “So, I assume you have a plan for the actual launch date.”
“Here’s where you lose your shit,” I said. “I want to move it up to the second week of December, or the first if we can get ahead of schedule.”
Instead of losing her shit, she nodded slowly. “I see. You want him to think we’re delaying to build our forces up more, then hit him while he’s unprepared. Less prepared, at least.”
“That’s the idea. What do you think?”
“I think it’s horrible.” She said it so matter-of-factly, it took me aback. “We won’t have enough Resistance cells in place. Andreas won’t have enough disruptors to pass around.”
“Point of order,” I said. “Less cells means we won’t need as many disruptors.”
“Granted,” she said. “We’ll also need to step up our recon efforts. I know Absynthe and Cory have given us a lot of information, but Alistair’s been shuffling schedules and operations. We need to watch for at least a month for patterns, and you’re moving the timetable up to just over that. Plus, again, less cells mean less ability to do so.”
“To argue in favor, I want to point out that going for the first week of the month means we can have Rachel and the trainees on location without it seeming suspicious. Finals run the first week of December and then we have about a month off. When the school is going into winter break mode, they spread agents out to cover the trainees who are going home, so that’ll be less of their people on campus.”
“You’re also leaving Absynthe out.”
I winced. Grace had estimated she might be capable by the end of the year. Christmas wasn’t out of the question. “You’re right. I didn’t think of that.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Star finished. “It’s a horrible idea. That’s why I’m fine if you want to risk it.”
“What?”
“Ever hear the saying about the world’s best swordsman? He isn’t afraid of the second or third best. He’s afraid of the worst, because he can’t predict what the stupid son of a bitch will do.” She grinned at me and finished her water. “Alistair’s been treating you like you’re at least a competent enemy. He’s not going to be expecting you to take this sort of risk. We might not be as prepared as we could be, but he’s not going to be expecting it, as long as the plan doesn’t slip. That’s the key point. Can we maintain operational security?”
“I think that’s more your field than mine.”
She nodded and leaned back against the booth. “Absolutely right. We build the Resistance around the concept. Cells and indirect communications, but the ability to act at a moment’s notice. Speaking of operational security, have you noticed anything?”
“About?”
“About me.”
I smiled and took the shot. “Boy or girl?”
The look of surprise on her face was something I’d treasure for the rest of my life.
Chapter Twenty Four
I walked up the hill toward the dorm once more, perhaps for one of the last times. Cold November wind blew into my face and I shrugged down within my coat. Classes were nearly over for the trimester. Unlike the last few, I’d made an attempt to study, and was proud to realize I was passing on my own merits for once. Barely passing, but passing. Granted, those merits consisted of cramming information into my head, since I was in higher level classes without paying attention in the lower levels, but it was better than nothing. I even stood a chance of passing my finals.
The thought made me smile. I was worrying about finals when we were about to launch a violent revolt within two weeks. By all rights, I should have been worrying about those plans instead, but Star was handling most of the logistics. All I had to do was prepare myself, and I was on top of my game. I’d beaten my own records of multi-tasking my psionic threads and I’d learned how to jam as much power into my ring as possible. Taking on the Establishment felt well within my grasp.
That feeling evaporated when I reached the entrance to the dorm. Alistair Ripley stood a few steps in front of the doorway, his hands folded on top of his cane. We stared at each other across the cold expanse for a moment before we both walked toward each other. “Fine weather, isn’t it, Mr. Parker?” he asked as we stepped into conversational distance. He wasn’t wearing a coat, gloves, not even a scarf.
