The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 3
Eden yanked her hand back.
“What is it?” Dr. Norton asked.
She rubbed the spot on her thumb, then lifted Jane’s head, swept her hair aside, and found a small disc adhered to the back of the girl’s neck. It was a disc Eden had seen before.
Are you sure you should take that off?
The gruff voice played in her memory. The man with the rough hands and the tattoos. The man who was now dead because of a cyanide pill. When he asked the question, Eden had registered a missing blip of time, like the world had momentarily lost reception, noticeable because of the drone. One second, circling overhead. The next, floating right beside her.
“Eden,” Dr. Norton said, bringing her back to the present.
“This disc.” She lifted Jane’s head so Dr. Norton could see it. “Mordecai had one with him at the abandoned power plant in North Allegheny. I think he used it on me.”
Dr. Norton came around the gurney and bent close to inspect the new discovery. Then he moved to Barrett Barr and found that he had one, too.
“What did it do?” Jack asked.
“I don’t remember,” Eden said. “I think it made me black out.”
Jack sat up straighter. “Do you think it’s the reason I can’t find a signal?”
“We could take them off and see,” Dr. Norton suggested.
“No,” Eden quickly replied.
Jack and Dr. Norton looked at her.
“That could be exactly what Mordecai is waiting for. Maybe he wants us to take them off.” Maybe this was the reason he left Subjects 003 and 004 behind. Mordecai was waiting for them to take off these discs, and when they did, he would force the pair to attack. Who would win between Eden and another one of Volkova’s weapons? The problem was, there were two of them and only one of her. The fight wouldn’t be fair. And her dad was upstairs—weak and sleeping. Mom by his side. “I think we should do the scan first.”
So they did.
Unfortunately, the scan didn’t work. Not a single image loaded on the screen.
Dr. Norton checked the machine to make sure nothing had malfunctioned.
When all appeared to be in working order, they tried Barrett. The same thing happened. Whatever was blocking Jack from breaching their networks must have blocked the scanner, too.
They were stumped. It seemed too dangerous to remove the discs without getting more information, but they couldn’t get more information without removing the discs.
“What about tranquilizer?” Jack finally said.
Eden looked at him.
“We know sedation works for a short time.”
He was right.
Sedation had worked on Eden.
Jack himself had administered it. Inside the Eagle Bend police department. And again and again and again in their home in Milwaukee.
Dr. Norton nodded slowly, looking very much like a man who couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of the idea first. “We could use a continuous stream of anesthetic gas.”
“Remove the discs while they’re under sedation,” Eden said, “and see if anything changes.”
The three of them looked at one another excitedly.
It was their best option.
Dr. Norton made the preparations. When he finished, he slipped the mask over Jane’s mouth and nose. They counted from ten to one. Then he removed the disc.
Eden watched warily—her entire body on high alert—as Jack hunched over his laptop and opened the list of networks. His eyes widened.
She stepped behind him and sure enough, there it was, right beneath Eden’s network. Tres. The Latin word for three. Only … “Why is her signal so weak?”
“I don’t know.” Jack’s fingers flew across the keyboard. Then he stopped, sank back, and stared in disbelief. “I’m in.”
He’d done it.
After a week of dead ends and frustrating failure, Subject 003 very suddenly had a visible network and Jack was in. The same method he’d used to hack into Eden’s network had gotten him into this one. After the short, stunned moment, Jack’s fingers flew back into motion. Eden didn’t understand anything he was doing. But he worked quickly and efficiently, like a man who’d been practicing for this very situation—pulling up windows, loading lists of code, copying and pasting and hitting various keys. Then he released a disbelieving squawk. “She’s disconnected.”
“What does that mean?” Eden asked.
“There’s no sign that she’s connected to the host.” Jack set his hand on top of his thinning hair. “If Mordecai is out there waiting to control her, he can’t. He needs to be connected to her network to control her, and he needs her location to re-connect with her network. Her location is scrambled. We should be safe.”
“Let’s try the scan again before we wake her,” Dr. Norton said.
This time, it worked. A treasure trove of images loaded on the computer, ready to be studied. But first, they needed to wake the patient.
With a great deal of caution, Dr. Norton turned off the gas and removed the mask.
Eden waited, oxygen stagnant in her lungs.
A moment later, the girl squeezed her eyes.
She scrunched her nose.
She blinked—several times in rapid succession—her confusion giving way to fear as she jerked upright, her attention darting left, then right.
All three of them held up their hands in a gesture of no harm.
But the girl jumped off the table and skittered into a corner.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Dr. Norton said in the same soothing voice he’d used on Eden after she sliced her hand open and watched it heal before her eyes.
The girl was not soothed.
She patted herself. Looked down at her clothes. Reached deep inside her pockets. Then cowered like a wild animal in a cage, her attention jerking from Barrett on the gurney, to the medical equipment in the room, then back to them with their hands held aloft. Erratic movements that filled Eden with apprehension. If they were grenades, she was an unstable one.
“You were taken,” Eden rushed to explain. “By a man named Mordecai. We got you away from him and you’ve just woken up.”
The girl squeaked.
“You’re safe,” Eden said, staying in place. Not daring to step closer. Trying to imagine how disorienting it would be to have been unconscious for as long as this girl was, only to wake up in a completely foreign environment, surrounded by strangers. “We aren’t going to hurt you. We’re on your side.”
Jane Doe didn’t move.
She stayed in the corner, crouched in her defensive position, her hooded eyes partially hidden beneath the choppy layers of hair that had fallen in her face.
“What’s your name?” Eden asked.
The girl’s attention darted about the room once again—from Eden to Jack to Dr. Norton to the unconscious Barrett, to the medical equipment all around. With another squeak, she squeezed her eyes shut.
Eden tried again. “Can you tell us what you remember?”
Nothing.
Dr. Norton scratched his mustache.
And another sound came.
Not from the girl.
But from above.
From outside.
A sound Dr. Norton and Jack Forrester couldn’t hear. But Eden could hear it. And judging by the way Subject 003 opened her eyes and tilted her head, she could hear it, too.
The distinct rev of a motorcycle.
Cass shut off the motorcycle.
Cleo parked behind him. As soon as she had made her discovery, they returned to Milwaukee. He’d jumped on his bike, which he’d left parked outside her residence hall, and Cleo followed him here, to Dr. Norton’s cabin in the woods on the lake at twilight.
Crickets chirped.
Geese honked.
The sinking sun peeked through remnants of storm clouds, creating a masterpiece over the water.
For the past week, Cass had hunted. His vision, a tunnel leading to one goal and only one goal—find Mordecai. Currently, Eden was safe. Reunited with her parents. Mordecai had not possessed her. He hadn’t touched the core of who she was. But the threat remained and would remain for as long as Mordecai remained. So Cass searched harder than he’d searched for anyone, determined to stay away until he eliminated the threat.
He failed.
The threat wasn’t eliminated. But they had a promising lead. And he couldn’t stay away any longer.
The front door swung open.
Eden stepped outside.
Cass drank her in like a man in the middle of the Sahara without a canteen. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been covered in her father’s blood. Now she stood silhouetted by the cabin, her eyes wide, her lips parted, her long hair a tumble around her face—innocent, unguarded. Much too young. Staring back at him as if the past seven days had tortured her as relentlessly as they had tortured him.
He imagined striding forward, pulling her to him, and repeating the kiss they’d shared outside Beverly’s home. His body flooded with the acute need to do so. But Cleo’s car door slammed shut—a reminder that they weren’t alone.
“He’s going to the ball!” Cleo exclaimed.
Forrester stepped outside with eyes like an insomniac, the screen door slapping shut as Cass and Cleo came forward to meet them.
“Who’s going to what?” Forrester asked.
“Mordecai,” Cass said, cutting a quick glance at Eden, who was refusing to meet his eye. “His real name is Nicholas Marks. He’s the Chief Investment Specialist for SafePad.”
“He’s on the guest list for the Prosperity Ball,” Cleo said. “My mom can get us tickets. We can surround him on all sides like an old-fashioned ambush.”
“You think he’s still going?” Eden asked, her attention trained on Cleo.
It was a question Cass had asked himself. Mordecai could have RSVP’d when his plans were succeeding. Maybe now, with those plans in disarray, he no longer had anything to celebrate.
The hinges of the screen door groaned as Dr. Norton stepped outside in his tweed flat cap, coaxing someone to join them like one might coax a frightened animal.
A girl appeared—slight and skittish, shielding her eyes like it was high noon.
“Jane,” Cleo said.
Cass gaped.
Subject 003 was awake.
4
Eden’s emotions swung on a violent pendulum.
Surprise.
Relief.
Confusion.
Anger.
Back and forth with such velocity, she felt nauseous.
She’d spent the last week using an extraordinary amount of energy suppressing thoughts of him. Distraction was the name of the game. Help her father with his exercises. Learn as much as she could about Barrett and the girl without an identity. It worked, to an extent. Until night came. Nothing could distract her in the dark. Thoughts of him came like a deluge as she tossed and turned and dug her head beneath her pillow.
Her father almost died. The bad guy got away. Subjects 003 and 004 were comatose in Dr. Norton’s basement. Eden was a freak of nature infested with microscopic robots that could—in the wrong hands—make her do things she didn’t want to do. Life, as she once knew it, was irrevocably lost. Yet this was what occupied her mind. A boy. Where was he? Why did he leave? Why hadn’t he been in touch? What was he doing now? And the most incessant of all—was he okay?
Now he was back as suddenly as he’d left.
With Cleo.
Not shot dead like Yukio the Bookie but perfectly intact.
They found Mordecai’s real name. He was going to the ball. The girl they were calling Jane was awake but not talking. Whether she could but wouldn’t or couldn’t but wanted to remained unclear. For all they knew, removing that disc had damaged her in some way that weakened her network and stole her voice. Maybe they did it wrong and now Jane was stuck in this weird limbo they couldn’t fix without asking the bad guy for help.
The only way to find out was by waking up Barrett Barr to see if his condition was the same. Which led them to the basement, where the pendulum swung, and Eden avoided Cassian’s stare like the plague.
As Dr. Norton brought the mask toward Barrett’s mouth and nose, Jane let loose another one of her strange squeaks.
Dr. Norton stopped and looked at the girl, as if waiting for her to object. Instead, she scurried to the corner of the room, sat down on the floor, and wrapped her arms around her middle.
“Maybe she’s hungry,” Cleo suggested.
“Do you want something to eat?” Jack asked.
Jane doubled over her crossed legs, her hair falling to the ground like choppy curtains.
Cleo shrugged.
Dr. Norton resumed, bringing the mask to Barrett’s face. He counted down from ten, then removed the disc.
“There he is,” Jack said. “Quattuor.”
It was the Latin word for four.
Another network.
Jack’s brow furrowed as his attention hopped around his computer screen.
“How’s the signal?” Eden asked.
“Strong.” Jack went to work and, a few minutes later, came to the same conclusion. Barrett Barr wasn’t connected to the host, either. He had been at one time, but not any longer.
Dr. Norton performed the body scan.
And a few minutes later, Barrett Barr awoke.
He didn’t squeak or cower, but remained prone on the gurney, looking from one person to the next like a football player on the ground, regaining consciousness after a blindsiding blow. “Uhhh,” he finally croaked. “Where am I?”
“He talks,” Cleo said.
Barrett sat up slowly, rubbing his forehead. He looked past Cleo toward Jane in the corner, who was no longer bent double, but watching suspiciously.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“What do you remember?” Eden replied.
Barrett scrunched his face, then gave his head a rattle. “The beach? In Maine.”
“Do you know who took you?”
“Someone took me?”
Eden stared.
Had he been unconscious this whole time? Ever since his disappearance this summer? If so, then he would have no idea what was going on. How did one jump in to such a story? She recalled standing in the kitchenette down this very hallway, a knife clattering to the floor. The shock of hearing the truth for the first time, even after watching her hand heal in a way no hand was meant to heal.
Dr. Norton placed his own over his chest. “My name is Dr. Benjamin Norton. You’re in my house and we’ve just woken you up.”
From there, Dr. Norton continued. The more he explained, the bigger Barrett’s eyes grew. And the more often he inserted disbelieving quips.
It’s September?
I’m in Wisconsin?
My face is on national news?
When Dr. Norton reached the part about nanobots and Interitus and Karik Volkova, Barrett started to laugh. It took him a while to stop. When he did, he wiped his eyes. “Which one of my brothers put you up to this? Or was it both of them?”
Nobody replied.
Barrett shifted so he could look past them, toward the hallway, as if fully expecting his brothers to walk in with laughter and smiles. “Good one, guys,” he called. “You can come out now.”
Nobody came.
Barrett’s attention returned to his audience of six. “How much are they paying you?”
“This isn’t a joke,” Jack said.
Barrett quirked his eyebrow.
“Everything we’ve told you is the truth.”
“The truth?”
Eden nodded. So did Dr. Norton and Jack and Cleo. Whether Cassian nodded, she couldn’t tell. She was still determinedly avoiding his gaze.
“I’m supposed to believe that I was created by Karik Volkova and I’m basically some sort of … superhero?”
Superhero was a strange word choice, one that implied goodness and bravery. They were weapons of terror. When nobody jumped in to correct him, his expression turned into a corkscrew—his mouth and nose scrunched and twisting to the side. Like he was thinking very, very hard.
“Arm wrestling,” he mumbled.
“What’s that?” Dr. Norton asked.
“I beat my brothers in arm wrestling.” Barrett looked up, his expression elongating into wide-eyed amazement. “We were on vacation in Maine. We go there every summer. All five of us. Graham said he’d give me fifty dollars if I could last thirty seconds against Jameson in an arm-wrestling match, which is basically impossible, but I had nothing to lose, so we got into position and I … I beat him. Graham got pissed. He thought Jameson threw the match on purpose so he’d be out fifty dollars. So Jameson says to Graham, ‘Think I’m joking? You try it. I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you can beat him.’ And I won! I beat Graham. I thought they were both messing with me. I don’t beat my brothers in arm wrestling. Nobody does. Then we went to the beach to look for crabs and the rest is just…” Barrett brought his fists to his temples, then made a sound like an explosion while moving his hands away and spreading his fingers wide. “Totally blank.”
Silence filled the room.
Cleo was the one to break it. “One doesn’t talk at all. The other is a veritable fount.”
The stairs creaked.
Eden turned.
Her mother stepped into the room with a crease on the side of her face, like she’d just woken from a very hard nap and was trying to gain her bearings. She looked from Jane cowering in the corner to Barrett, sitting on the gurney, to Cleo with her skull and bones necklace and snakebite lip piercing, to Cassian in his motorcycle jacket—unreasonably gorgeous and excessively brooding, looking every inch the fighter.
Barrett lifted his hand. “Hi.”
Mom blinked dumbly. “You’re … awake.”
“And very chatty.” Cleo stepped forward and shook Mom’s hand. “You must be Ruth. Or should we call you Molly?”
Molly was her mother’s former name when her father was still Alaric.
