The Reach

—33—

The Sikorsky S-76 helicopter lifted off from the private airfield at 3:45 p.m. central time. On board were eight men in full attack gear: STRIKE DOAV Vests, black UnderArmour moisture-wicking T-shirts, goggles, radio, combat boots, Hell-storm Python Light Rappel gloves, and M9 pistols. Four carried specially modified M4 assault rifles with dart rounds. One of them held something considerably more dangerous.

The Special Operations team was led by Bertie McDwyer. McDwyer had served ten years with the army, in Europe and then in the Middle East during Desert Storm. He had been assigned to various bases within the United States before joining the army’s school for snipers at Ft. Benning.

After graduating he had carried out several clandestine operations, neutralizing high-level targets on five separate occasions without a single complication. Now he was a killer for hire. He was known for striking fast and hard and without hesitation. He was young, strong, and experienced.

And at the moment he was scared shitless, for several reasons. McDwyer knew exactly what they were up against in this mission, even if the rest of his team did not. He didn’t like the way this one was playing out.

This bothered him a great deal. Snipers were supposed to be immune from human emotions such as remorse and fear. It was a basic tenet of their training, and there was good reason for it. He had seen more than one man killed because of a split-second hesitation on the battlefield.

The helicopter banked left and slipped low under an orange sun. The glint off the chop of a small lake hit McDwyer in the eyes. He winced and glanced away. Like the reflection off the scope of a rifle. It had happened to him only once, but that was enough. A sniper, looking into the lens of another. Predator to predator, like two lions crouched in the brush. He had been first to pull, and he sometimes thought about that split-second difference. Who lived, who died, playing God in the blink of an eye.

“Listen up. Everson and Keene, put that shit away.” The two men yanked iPod earbuds from their ears and shoved them into pockets. “We deploy at 1730. I will only say this once. We are to contain and provide cover for ground forces moving in on the facility. Their mission is to locate and subdue the target peaceably. We are on reserve team duty.”

Boots tapped, knees bounced. Like purebred horses straining at the bit, McDwyer thought. They were some of the best available. He’d trained most of them himself. They had been told very little about this particular mission, and that was dangerous. McDwyer knew that the most mistakes were made when the team did not have all the facts. But Berger had insisted upon the highest levels of security, and could not be convinced otherwise.

“I know you want to be first in line, but you will obey my orders. A highly sensitive and dangerous subject is housed in this facility. We have strict orders to disable if necessary, but do not shoot to kill. I repeat—anyone attempting a kill shot will be terminated themselves. Permanently.”

“Who’s the target?”

McDwyer hesitated just long enough for them to see it in his eyes. “A juvenile female.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Never you mind, Everson. We arc a safety net only. I do not want weapons drawn unless I give the command to move in.”

“Sir—”

“I anticipate zero complications on the ground, and I sure as fuck don’t expect them up here. Anyone have any problems with that? Good. We have one hour and forty minutes to deployment.”

McDwyer distributed a photo and description of the target, and moved back to the front to let them sort it all out. He plopped himself down next to the pilot, a twenty-year veteran who had flown thirty missions in Desert Storm. A family man, and himself a killer of over fifteen people. Jesus, McDwyer thought. He massaged his temples with both pointer fingers. He didn’t know why he was thinking about this right now.

“How’s the daughter? Any news?”

McDwyer found Keene crouched near his seat. He covered his headset mike. “Keep it off-line, will you?”

“Sorry. You just looked like you could use some company.”

“I shouldn’t have told you a fucking thing about it.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of, sir. We all make mistakes.”

“It’s not a mistake, Keene. It’s a human being.”

“Sorry. You know what I meant.” Keene scratched his underarm with a gloved finger. “How old is she?”

“She’ll be nine next May.” McDwyer shook his head. Nine years old, and they’d never even met. The mother was a woman he’d slept with two or three times while on leave from the army, when he was only twenty-three. Barely old enough to have hair on his dick. She’d called to tell him just last week. Why now, he had no idea; maybe she was after money.

In his line of work, family meant weakness. He couldn’t afford to let this get in the way. It was bad enough he’d let it slip to Keene. One too many tequila shots last night. It wasn’t like him, and he wondered for just a split second whether he was having some sort of breakdown.

“I just figured I’d ask, after seeing the photo you gave out back there,” Keene said. “A little girl, about the same age, I thought maybe you were having trouble getting your head around this one. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“That’s enough.” McDwyer kept his voice low and hard. “You don’t know the first thing about it. Get back there and buckle in.”

Keene looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded and returned to his seat. McDwyer glanced at the pilot, but the man stared straight out the windshield and made no sign that he had heard the exchange. It wasn’t likely. The sound of the rotor would drown out everything but a shout.

Does Keene have a point? McDwyer didn’t know what scared him worse, knowing what this little girl could do if she got away from them, or the possibility of having to line her head up in his sights and squeeze the trigger.

McDwyer had been the kill switch on this project for over a year now, but it wasn’t until last week that he’d started questioning why.

The helicopter banked across a field, low enough to cause a ripple in the brush. They were less than an hour and a half away now.

McDwyer wondered, for the hundredth time, what exactly would be waiting for him when they arrived.

—34—

“Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon. Your class get canceled? You forget something, maybe?” The guard’s greedy eyes lingered, staring at Jess Chambers’s nose, mouth, breasts, and she let him do it, let him hope that she had come back for him.

She flashed him the pass from her bag and smiled, a big, toothy grin. “Has Dr. Wasserman left yet?”

“Don’t know, but he might have, I had to use the facilities. You want me to radio up?”

“No, that’s all right. I’ll only be a minute. I just wanted to look for an earring.”

“You women are always losing stuff. Maybe when you get done, we can go get that drink….”

Now comes the hard part, Jess thought, and she parked behind the hospital again and hurried to the front doors, keeping her face down and turned away from the windows. She hadn’t wanted to wait for Patrick’s help. A lot of this depended on luck, but she didn’t want to waste another second, now that her mind was made up. God only knew what Wasserman might do to Sarah while they all sat around like career politicians trying to decide the best way to get her out.

She hoped Andre was busy elsewhere. She could only pray that her photograph hadn’t been handed out to everyone who worked in the building.

She clipped her pass to her jacket and walked fast down the empty hall, listening for voices. She heard them in the playroom; it was the right time, she had timed it perfectly.

She opened the doors and studied each corner of the room. There were six or seven children in here now, and two white-shirted women who might have been counselors. It did not take her long to find Dennis, in his baseball cap and sneakers. He was standing by the bookshelves, counting the books.

She waited just a moment to harden herself for what had to be done.

The two counselors looked up when she came in but didn’t say a word, and she didn’t see anything but mild interest in their eyes. That would change. She crossed the room quickly. Dennis saw her coming. He smiled. “Onetwothreefourfivesixseven. Seven books.”

“Yes, Dennis, that’s right. Seven books.” She leaned into him and whispered, “I’m sorry about this,” and then she put her hand on his forearm, let her hand rest firmly so he could feel it.

The reaction was immediate. Dennis jerked away from her like he had been burned. He shook his head. She steeled herself and reached for him again.

“Don’t touch Dennis, no touching, that’s the rules, Dennis doesn’t like to be touched…” His voice wound up like a siren. He backed into the bookcase, eyes rolling, and turned, not looking at anything now. He flailed out with both arms. Books fell to the floor with a loud double thump. He pushed at more books and they teetered and fell like dominoes, pages fluttering. “No touching, Nononono-nonono…”

The two counselors got up and came over fast. “You’re not supposed to do that,” one of them said over the shouting. “God. Nicki, get someone in here.” The other woman scurried out of the room. “Now, Dennis, calm down—oh, hell.”

Dennis had backed himself into the corner and looked like he wanted to go right on through. He was big, clumsy; it wouldn’t be easy to get him back in line. He had reached a fever pitch now, his head whipping back and forth, and his voice had begun to stir up the other children, one of them laughing, another starting to throw toys at the screen on the window. Bang-bang. The female counselor was trying to get him to stop flailing his arms without touching him again.

I’ll make this up to you, Dennis, Jess thought. I promise. She ducked out of the room and back down the hall. Wasserman’s office door was ajar, she could hear voices. Nobody came out after her. She hoped she had bought herself enough time.

The elevator was damnably slow, and she wished she had taken the fire stairs. Finally the doors opened onto the smell of disinfectant and stale air. It’s cold down here, too cold, and she resisted the urge to hug her arms to her chest.

The man behind the desk (not Andre, thank God) looked like he had left high school about a week ago. She didn’t recognize him. “There’s a problem in the play area,” she said, as he came around to meet her in his white hospital suit. “It’s Dennis. They need help calming him down.”

“I’m not supposed to leave—”

“Listen to me. Andre’s out for coffee and Evan asked me to come get you. We’re short staffed and Dennis is going to give them trouble. Go on now. I’ll watch the desk here until you get back.”

He swallowed hard. “I’ll be just a minute.”

She waited until the elevator doors closed. There was not much time. It wouldn’t be long before Wasserman and the others figured out what she had done, and why. She had to get Sarah out now.

But the keys proved impossible to find. Behind the desk was an intercom speaker, a series of cubbyholes labeled with patients’ names and doses of medication, heavy canvas gloves, and a can of mace. A little three-inch television flickered from the corner, the sound turned low.

The orderly would have the keys on him, she thought, of course he would. If they came back down before she got Sarah to the stairs, she would be trapped. Damn. How the hell are you going to get through that door?

Despair settled over her like dusty cobwebs. She had been driven by emotion, by need, not stopping long enough to think more than a few minutes ahead. Whatever she was searching for was close now, she could taste it like blood on her teeth. But she had backed herself into a corner, and now the walls were closing in on all sides as she imagined what might happen to her when she got caught down here.

It’s too late. Just get out while you still can.

That was the voice of a quitter, and she refused to listen.

It wasn’t until she turned away in frustration that she felt the answer, an unseen presence so vivid she brushed instinctively at her face and hair as if to push it away. Only then did she wonder how she had failed to notice it before. It was as if the air itself were alive.

Jess Chambers felt an odd transient moment of doubling, as if she were looking through two pair of eyes, one outside, one within. The hair on her neck and arms rose as if in warning. For another long moment she stood silent, immobile, and then pushed through into the corridor with a sense that she had stepped into a darker place.

—35—

The corridor was in shadows, and any other residents who might remain behind the padded walls were still. An eerie calm had settled over the basement. Jess Chambers passed each door with ghost images burned into her mind, the feeling that she had been here before, that she existed both on the outside and the inside of these prison cells.

As a psychologist you have to listen to other people’s private thoughts, thoughts nobody else ever has to know about. But a child doesn’t hide things the way adults do; with children, you don’t have the same barriers. So why, in the time they had spent together, did Jess still feel Sarah had been hiding from her?

She knew the answer, in this cold place, inside the buzzing of electric air; Sarah did not trust anyone, not even herself. Things had happened within these walls, accidents that were not entirely blameless.

Mental illness is a matter of mistrust, Jess thought, as she walked. Never knowing when your own mind might betray you. Jess had private thoughts, of course. She was sometimes unable to keep her mind from things that might be considered inappropriate. She knew that it gave her distance. But what must it be like to a little girl who had felt responsible for others’ lives ever since she had been able to form such thoughts? Who knew with certainty that her every emotion could end up with such dire consequences?

They played into that here, didn’t they, Sarah? Made you feel guilty? Made you feel responsible when accidents happened, when you could not control yourself?

The air seemed to pulse, as if in answer. Hands tickled the inside of her skull.

Jess crouched at Sarah’s door, the last along the line. She considered the lock. This was not one that could be sprung with a bobby pin. She stood and peered through the little window. Touched the glass and found it ice-cold. Traced a fingernail along the surface; it was translucent, lightly covered by frost. She rubbed it away.

Sarah Voorsanger stood against the far wall. The jacket that had contained her was lying torn and discarded on the floor. Jess was awed by the changes in the girl, how tall and straight she stood now, the power that she held in the depths of her dark eyes, pulsing from her like waves. Oh, we only saw the barest glimpse of it, didn’t we? We only knew the edges of the truth. Sarah had been afraid before, and her faith and hope of an eventual release had faded long ago; perhaps her urge to fight had faded with them. But now she was stronger, and older, and she had a reason to fight for her life. She had been introduced to a world of possibilities outside this place.

Sarah looked up into the glass, and they found each other. Jess could see her breath, puffing like silver clouds before her face. She could feel something inside her mind, probing.

In spite of her best efforts to subdue it, fear trickled through, cut deep into her gut. Sarah crossed the little room and put her hand up against the glass. Their fingers touched with the window between them. Something groaned, and the glass cracked and buckled. The hand twitched inside her skull.

Jess felt it just in time, fell away from the door as it shrieked and split at its hinges, as it tipped with a shuddering crash to the floor.

Concrete dust swirled and spun like tiny tornadoes in the following silence. Jesus Lord. Jess got to her feet, choking on the thickened ait. The door was a twisted chunk of discarded metal lying against the opposite wall. She reached down and touched a ragged edge, yanked her hand away from the scalding heat. She could hardly believe what she had just seen. But the evidence was lying smoking and battered at her feet.

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Back in the outer room, she heard the elevator whir to life.

“Sarah?” Jess said. “We have to go. Now.” No response. She peered into the wound where the door had been. Sarah stood just inside the opening. Her lips were blue and she was trembling.

“I was bad,” she said softly. “And I liked it. I almost couldn’t stop.”

No seizures now, she’s learning how to control it better. Or was that just a side effect of whatever they were feeding her?

Words rushed and stumbled over themselves in an attempt to get out. “They’ve been telling you this is bad ail your life, Sarah. I know they have. But they’re wrong. We can work all this out later, but right now you can’t think about all that, not if we’re going to have a chance to get out of here. Do you understand? You have to trust yourself. This power is a part of you, just like anything else. It’s nothing to be ashamed of—”

“Leave me alone!” Sarah shouted. “Please.” She backed away again, into the corner of the padded room. “I’ll hurt you, I’ll hurt everyone, I won’t be able to keep it down anymore.”

The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. A moment later Evan Wasserman stepped into the hall. He was flanked by two big men wearing riot gear and protective goggles and carrying police batons in ugly, thick-fisted hands. She saw guns clipped to their belts. Not cops, Jess thought. But they sure as hell know what they’re getting into down here.

She stepped forward, planted both feet, and gave her best bluff. “Hey. Where the hell have you been? She’s already gone, I couldn’t stop her.”

“Shut the fuck up and step away from the door,” one of the men said. She heard the fear in his voice, though he was trying hard to keep it down.

A syringe glistened in Wasserman’s hand. “You’ll never get close enough to her,” Jess said.

“That’s why you’re going to do it.”

“The fuck I am.”

“She trusts you. You’re the only one.” Wasserman took a few steps closer. “You can help us, or not. But these walls are reinforced steel and concrete. They’re specially made for this sort of thing. Nobody can hear you down here, and there’s no way out. Why don’t you make it easy on yourself?”

Wasserman’s eyes were wild and his tie was missing. There was an air about him of absent neglect, like a home where all the lights were blazing and the grass grew tangled in the yard. He’s lost it, she thought. He’ll kill us both now.

And then, with the strength of a fist in the guts, it hit her; why he had agreed to let her into all this, why he had encouraged her to win Sarah’s trust, but never given her any real freedom or power in the attempt. What do you do with a girl who defies everything you have ever believed about the world? A girl who cannot be controlled, locked up, sedated forever? A girl who has the power to destroy you? What do you do with her when you’ve been beaten?

“You end the game,” she said. “On your terms. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“She fought me,” Wasserman said. “For all these years she fought me hard. She’s ruined this hospital, ruined my life. I had a life once, you understand? Someone I loved. Do you know she’s killed two men? I bet that’s something you haven’t talked about in your little counseling sessions.”

His anger and fear seemed to explode from him as he came forward, closer. Jess could smell it like iron within his clothes, his sweat. “She hasn’t taken any sedatives in two days,” he said. “She’s too strong. They’ve dosed her with something that multiplies the effect. Don’t you see? You don’t have any choice. We don’t have any choice. From the moment she was born she’s destroyed everything. It’s gone too far now, too far. There can’t be any more tests. Who knows what she could do, if she gets out of here!”

“I won’t do it, Wasserman. I won’t be your executioner.”

“Then you’re a liability.” Wasserman fumbled in his jacket and came out with the gun from his desk drawer. His hand shook as he pointed it at her. “I’ll ask you to get out of the way.”

“The police know where I am,” Jess said. “They’ll be here any minute. You need help. Maybe we can talk to someone—”

“Don’t try that juvenile psychoanalysis with me. I was treating patients when you were still riding a school bus. I know what I’m doing.”

“Sarah’s not your enemy.”

“She’s not even human!” Wasserman shrieked. Spittle flecked his lips. “She’ll be the end of us all, do you hear me? You don’t know the truth of it! She could rip the world apart by its seams—”

Jess sensed movement from the corner of her eye. Sarah stepped like a ghost from her padded cell. Wasserman paled. His mouth moved but no sound came out. They stood staring at each other in the silent hall.

Wasserman’s hand shook holding the gun. Neither of them spoke. Jess was reminded for a fleeting moment of an old western, where the gunslingers met in the middle of the dusty road and faced each other down. Except in this version one of the gunslingers was a little girl, and her only weapon was her mind.

Do it, Jess urged silently. The hell with all of them. Push. Push hard.

She felt an answering squeeze, and the blood in her veins turned to ice. The temperature plummeted.

Sarah smiled.

The two men moved up to Wasserman’s side and held their batons in both hands like clubs. “Take it easy,” one of them said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone….”

Sarah looked from one man to the other. It happened as simply as a breath of wind; a sudden surge of air, a tickle in the back of her mind, and they were thrown backward as if a giant hand had reached out and punched them squarely in the chest.

They landed on their backs with a double thud, skidding across the smooth floor in a tangle of arms and legs, and came to rest still and silent at the threshold of the outer room.

The report of the gun was like a thunderclap in the narrow hall. Jess registered the bucking of Wasserman’s hand, the sudden ringing in her ears, and then Sarah shrieked and stumbled backward. A voice answered inside her head, and the mental fist clenched with vicious force. Jess felt herself driven to her knees. Dimly she felt the blood inside her temples surge and throb. Something had been turned loose inside her skull, and now it scampered through fat gray coils and dug its talons into soft flesh. She struggled for consciousness, felt herself slipping, the past and present mingling like ghosts.

Michael, there’s a car, get out of the road…

Jess bit down hard. The world spun and righted itself.

She looked up through splayed fingers. The frigid air cut like glass in her lungs. Mist swirled along the concrete floor, slipped in tendrils up the gray walls and boiled above their heads like little thunderclouds.

Sarah stood upright. A bloody stain spread over her left shoulder. Her eyes were wide and glittering, her fists clenched. Sweat dripped from her forehead.

The gun barked again, and again; Jess watched in wonder as the bullets slowed in midair, trembled, hung like tiny planets in a thickening wind. Finally they dropped harmlessly to the floor.

Wasserman shook the gun in his hand as if it had suddenly grown teeth and bitten him. It would not come loose. His flesh began to smoke as metal twisted and melted into his skin. He screamed. Then the look on his face changed. His free hand went to his neck. He coughed, made a sound like a dog with a bone caught in its throat. He shook his head, tried to back away, and stumbled.

A storm was building inside the hall. Jess could sense it coming, a feeling like going deeper underwater.

Wasserman’s hand had left his throat and now clutched at his bulging eyes. Blood trickled between his fingers.

“No,” Jess said. “Sarah, stop it. You’re going to kill him.”

Wasserman’s feet left the floor. He rose as if lifted by a wind. His head was thrown back now and his limbs were quivering. Blood dripped from his face and was sucked away by the quickening air. His head snapped once to the right, then back again, and then he was tossed lightly to the side and discarded.

A low cracking sound came from under the floor. The tiles shuddered, groaned in protest. Every window in every door blew outward in a rain of flying glass. Jess touched moisture on her face, drew her bloody fingers back. The pounding in her head was fast and furious. Her vision faded, came back again in yellows and reds.

Sarah headed for the stairs at the end of the hall. The door slammed open, twisted on its hinges. She climbed the steps and disappeared out of sight. Tendrils of gray fog slithered after her.

She’s not going to be able to stop.

Jess struggled to her feet. Every step was an agony of thudding pain. Moans and squeals of protest rose up all around her as the building took on weight, felt the squeeze of unseen hands.

A shot rang out. Someone screamed from the upper levels. Two more shots in quick succession. The world crashing down around her, Jess ran for the stairs. Her brother’s face came as clear to her as if he had been standing at her feet. You will not get away from me this time. Not again. She repeated it to herself as she took the steps two at a time, as she emerged into a hailstorm of destruction on the upper floor. Great cracks ran along the walls, Wasserman’s door gone, his office turned upside down; three more bodies on the floor, a lot of blood, more guns lying useless against the wall. Papers, wood, and bits of concrete still settling in the wake of Sarah’s passage.

Something was wrong. The air had lost its energy all at once, as if a charge had been released. Jess spotted two men in attack gear and rifles peering out from behind doors at the other end of the hall, at the smaller body lying facedown a few steps away.

Then she heard a puff and felt a fist hit her in the right shoulder, and darkness welled up and slipped over her head, taking her down deep with it.

—36—

She awoke to silence, blackness arching overhead into seemingly limitless distance. Her head felt stuffed with cotton, her tongue swollen thick as a sock in her mouth. For a moment she thought she was back in her childhood bed once again, waiting for the sound of the key in the lock at the front door. Then something changed, but in her muddled state she didn’t realize immediately what it was.

Finally she was able to focus enough to find meaning in the face peering down at her.

Ronald Gee smiled, his eyes glittering in the light cast from a distant portion of the room. “There you are,” he said. His voice seemed to cup and then release her. “Better take it easy. You were hit with a pretty heavy tranquilizer. We were starting to wonder if you were coming back.”

“Let me up,” Jess said. Her voice sounded different in her ears. A stranger’s voice. She tried to lift her arms and could not. Something was very wrong. Gee was not doing anything to help.

“We don’t have long,” he said. “She’ll know you’re awake in a moment. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Why on earth—you? You’re in on this?”

“It’s all part of the overall scheme of things,” Gee said. “I don’t expect you to understand right away. Dr. Shelley can explain things better than I can. But I want you to know that nothing bad has to happen to you. We can all get what we want out of this. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth.”

“Where’s Sarah?”

“She’s safe. You should know that, if you really consider it.”

She did. Sarah was there with her, somehow; she didn’t know quite how or why she knew, but it was true.

“What about Shelley?”

“She’s got loads of money, all that money from her family steel business, billions, she’s bankrolled Helix, the entire operation. And she found you. You’re a special case, you know. People like you are almost impossible to find. We searched for years.”

“People like me?”

“You’re a carrier, Jess. We’ve done a lot of research on this. Autism can be a symptom, you see, it can be traced through generations, through families. Your brother, he was a carrier, and probably your mother too.”

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

Gee smiled. “See, I told you I wouldn’t be very good at this. What I mean is, you’ve got the psi gene. It’s just been dormant. Oh, it’s nothing like Sarah’s, I don’t mean that. You’re not at that level. But you’ve been in a deep sleep, and we’re waking you up. Dr. Shelley’s been dosing you with the dimerizer we developed. Slipping them into your drinks, your food. We’ve gotten the little factory dusted off and chugging away. Can’t you feel it, Jess? I know you can.”

For a moment he seemed to loom over her in his excitement, and she clenched her eyes shut tight, and then blinked three times. His face with its horrible goatee was still there, but it had retreated a bit, and his grin looked a little less like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, but she did, even at this very moment she believed every word. That coffee in the Cave, the oily rings floating across the surface… my God What have they done to me?

“I’m sorry I had to pull the wool over your eyes. I really am. But you were supposed to be brought in gently. Look, I’m just a cog in the wheel here. If it had been up to me, I might have done things differently, but it doesn’t matter what I think.”

A terrible thought occurred to her. “Not Patrick too? Or Charlie?”

He shook his head. “Patrick’s oblivious of anything more than two inches beyond his own nose. So wrapped up in that silly group. Shelley knew about your friendship with Charlie, she knew about Charlie’s connection with Patrick. It was all set up to happen the way it did. Patrick and I talked about women once or twice, I suggested he make a couple of recent phone calls to put himself back into Charlie’s thoughts, you know, old flame and all, and she steered you our way. Neither one of them knew the full truth.”

“Why, Gee?” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”

“Because we needed you,” another voice said. “I need you.”

Dr. Jean Shelley stepped forward into the light. She walked with difficulty, seeming to favor her right leg. All the elegance and gentle grace was gone, and left in its place was this pale, haggard shell.

“I don’t have much time,” she said. “I have to do whatever I can now, or it will be too late for me. But everything I’ve told you is true. We needed someone fresh, someone special. Someone who could connect to her like her mother could have, if she were well. We checked into your medical background, school records, intelligence tests. You had some blood taken during a physical, we got our hands on that too. It became clear, with your family history and the test results, that you are a psi carrier. We needed you to make a bond with Sarah, so that when the time came…” She shrugged. “You could help us. Help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“Convince her to do the right thing. Do you understand? She needs a friend, a mentor to guide her. This ability she has, it’s too big for one little girl to hold. We’ve pushed and tweaked and encouraged it to the point of ignition. The brain is a muscle like any other, and she’s been building it up without any sort of regulator. But the company’s gotten what they need from her, the scientists have done their thing, and now it’s my turn. And you’re my safety valve.”

“You want her to perform some sort of miracle?”

“I want her to fix her mistake!” Shelley shouted. A vein throbbed in her temple. She shook her head, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, let it out in a hiss. “I’m sorry, I lost control. That was wrong of me. But this is… emotional. I have days left, if that. She can do it. She’s done enough to hold it off before, and now that she’s stronger I think she can erase it completely. There are plenty of examples of psychic healing, from Jesus Christ himself right on down the line. Why not Sarah? I want her to kill each and every diseased cell, hunt them down and destroy them. She can do that much for me.”

“And if that’s not possible?”

Shelley didn’t answer, just looked at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. Jess knew then, if she hadn’t before: Dr. Jean Shelley had lost her mind.

She chose her next words carefully. “What about Wasserman?”

“Evan was a cog in the wheel,” Shelley said. “He helped us do the work, consulted with me on medical opinions, but he never even knew I was behind Helix, behind the grant money that kept the facility afloat. When this whole place comes crashing down, he’ll take the fall in public for it. I know you think I’m cruel. He had feelings for me, yes, and I manipulated that. But you can’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what you’d do, until you’re in my shoes.”

“He’s dead,” Jess said. “I saw Sarah kill him.”

“And I will be too, if we can’t get her to help.” Shelley nodded at someone. Two men stepped forward, into her line of sight. Heavy and large through the shoulders. The muscle. What are they going to do, threaten to break my legs? But they only unhooked the straps from her wrists and ankles and then helped her to a sitting position. Gee watched with arms folded across his chest.

She looked around. They were in a huge, empty room. The walls and ceiling were covered with some sort of black material, and there were no windows. The only light came from the open door at their backs. With such little light the room seemed to expand, to stretch into infinity.

“You want to know where you are,” Gee said. “Sensory deprivation tanks can expand the mind exponentially. Studies have shown that psi is enhanced when external stimuli are limited. We tested her in here. You think that random number generator trick was cool? You should have seen some of the things she showed us. But we’ve been able to keep pretty tight controls on her, limiting her with drugs. As she’s grown, her abilities have expanded. It would be amazing to see what she’s capable of now.”

“If you’ll think things through, you’ll see that this is the only way,” Shelley said. “By helping us you’re helping Sarah. You’re keeping her alive too. Because if she doesn’t learn how to control this gift that she has, she won’t survive it. Reach out to her and bring her back. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted to do all along?”

“We all win,” Gee said. “Just like I told you.” He stepped closer to her. “I want to see Sarah do well, just like you. I think she’s one of the most incredible miracles ever to walk this earth. We can all learn from her.”

Damn it. Think. Her mind felt sluggish from the drugs they had given her. Her hands and feet tingled and she shook them lightly, as if freeing them from sleep. She looked around the little group. They were all watching her, waiting for her to make a move.

“I guess I don’t have a choice.”

Shelley smiled. A range of emotions washed across her features, softening them in the gentle light from the open door. “Good girl. I knew you’d understand. I always knew it, from the first moment I saw you.” She stepped up to the gurney and put her hand on Jess’s shoulder, then leaned in more closely as if revealing a secret. Her face burned with a feverish intensity. Jess resisted the urge to shrug away her touch. “I know I’ve handled this badly, in many ways. I know you feel betrayed. But try to see things from the right perspective. I’ve spent the last few years trying to help Sarah, keep her from harming herself. Evan took things a bit too far at the end, but he’s gone now. There are a lot of people who want a piece of her, but I can make them go away. I can keep her hidden.”

“I have your word on that?”

“Of course. Now, she’s safe, in an adjoining room. She’s sedated, enough to keep her contained, but we can bring her out of it anytime. What I need for you to do is go in there and talk to her, tell her what you want. I’ll leave the details up to you.”

Sarah fought her way up through the layers of cloud and fog, clawed her way through with renewed determination until she felt the final gossamer wing slip and part and she opened her eyes. For a very long moment, she did not understand where she was, or what had happened; only that her shoulder hurt terribly under the bandage, and her head felt as if it had been emptied and then filled back up with shards of glass.

I want to go home, she thought, for no reason at all.

You don’t even know where home is.

Around this little room were angles and corners of no particular significance; she did not recognize anything. There was equipment nearby, enough that it brought to mind the Room, and then she knew where she was and her little heart broke.

No. I won’t do it again.

Memories flooded her mind. The door ripping off its hinges, the two men being flung aside, the doctor being lifted off his feet and choking with blood, and she liked it, yes, she did, she had felt the power flowing out of her in a long, smooth wave and it felt good.

She moaned softly. She could control it better now, but somehow that made things even worse.

You are committing a mortal sin, one that cannot be undone.

She had killed him.

He deserved it.

That small voice in her mind was cruel and cut deep. But the thought of it thrilled her all the same, the idea of the ultimate revenge against so many injustices that had been heaped upon her for so long. She could do it to any of them. She could crush them like a bug beneath her heel, make them bleed or burn or slowly suffocate.…

No!

The sound of the door brought her back. She shivered at the sudden cold, at the puff of her breath and the realization that she had almost let it go again. It was so strong now, she had to clamp down so hard that it hurt. This thing inside her was like a coiled snake waiting to strike.

For a moment she caught a glimpse of the Room through the door, beyond the familiar figure that filled the space.

Jess Chambers closed the door behind her. Sarah leapt up and off the little bed and flung herself into Jess’s arms, ignoring the stabbing pain in her shoulder and the blood oozing through the bandage, sobbing, burying her little face against her chest.

“There, now,” Jess said. She held her and stroked Sarah’s hair. “Hush. It’s all right. We’re going to get through this, you hear me? We’re going to make our way through.”

“They’re watching,” Sarah said. Her voice was muffled against Jess’s shirt, and she pulled away and swiped at her eyes and nose.

“I know it. There’s a camera mounted near the ceiling. Don’t worry about that. Is your arm okay?”

“It hurts.”

“I bet it does. You did well down there, kiddo. You didn’t have a choice, with what happened. You know that, don’t you?

“I…”

“You kept us both from getting killed. Dr. Wasserman wasn’t going to listen to us, there was nothing you could do to change what happened.”

“I want to get out of here.”

“We can work on that. It’s almost time now. You know what they want you to do?”

Sarah nodded, sniffled. “Dr. Shelley, she’s sick. She’s going to die. And I don’t care.”

“I don’t blame you. But could you help her, if you wanted?”

“I don’t know.”

“They want me to convince you to try. They think I can get into your head somehow, with this drug they’ve given me, and there’s something to that, isn’t there? I mean I can feel it working on me, and I can feel you there. There’s this pain in my shoulder, just where you were shot.”

“I feel it,” Sarah whispered.

“Well, I don’t care what they want. I’m not going to convince you to do anything, Sarah. This is your decision. You have to figure it out on your own.”

Jess held her out at arm’s length, studied her face. Then she pulled her in close as if to hug her and put her lips to Sarah’s ear. “Don’t make a sound,” she said softly. “I know you’re scared. I don’t think they’re going to just let us walk away. But there is another way out. It’s not going to be pretty, and people are going to get hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying? Remember what I said before. You have to trust yourself.”

Sarah gave a little nod. Fear ripped through her belly and prickled her neck. But at the same time she felt a terrible eagerness to begin, to let it out, to see where it would all lead.

“Whatever happens, it’s not your fault. It’s time to let it loose, don’t hold back.”

You are committing a mortal sin.

They deserve it. Each and every single one of them.

“I think you better get away from me now,” Sarah said.

Jean Shelley waited just outside the door to the prepping room. The others were watching from inside the control booth. The huge, empty space yawned behind her like something coming to gobble her up, but she kept her gaze focused on the door, waiting for it to open. Willing it to open. Please. Her breathing came in shallow little gasps; it was difficult to get air now with the fluid pressing in on her lungs.

As she waited she tried to remember to calm her thoughts, slow her heartbeat, retreat to a meditative state. But she had gone too far now down another path, and her mind would no longer cooperate. She found herself thinking back to the night so many years ago and the strange woman who had arrived at the hospital. Annie Voorsanger had changed her life forever, and she probably didn’t even know it. How little Shelley had understood then, and how far she had come.

When the door opened, she knew instantly that it was over. Warmth spread through her body. The girl was beautiful, framed in the light from behind, her face in shadow. Angelic. Here was her savior; here was her life, ready to be returned to her.

They had dosed her with the dimerizer, dialed her up to full power. It was now or never. Dr. Jean Shelley stretched out her arms and closed her eyes. A great peace washed over her as she felt the room temperature begin to drop and her skin prickle.

She envisioned each and every diseased cell withering under the attack. They were in full retreat now as the girl worked her psychic fingers in among the folds of tissue. Playing them like a concert pianist would caress the ivory keys. Shelley smiled a little as her mind brought her back to those days when she could sit at the piano for hours as a child, her father, still alive then and retired from the company, pausing every once in a while to listen from the kitchen as he washed his hands before supper; go on now, Jean, play the Beethoven. God, how she missed that. The light through the sitting room window was red at sunset and lit the room up like fire….

“Stop,” a hoarse voice said. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

Shelley opened her eyes. She frowned. A bloody apparition had appeared at the main door to the observation room.

Evan Wasserman shuffled in on broken, bloody feet. His eyes were nearly swollen shut. Gore streaked his face and caked his hair. One arm hung at an odd angle. The other held a gun. It looked like half his hand had melted into the grip.

He peered at her through puffy lids, a puzzled expression on his face. “Jean, I—I don’t understand. We agreed to end this ourselves. Why are there men downstairs?”

“Evan,” she said, pleading. “Don’t.”

“It was supposed to be done quietly,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Nobody would have to know. This place would be safe, the children…” He looked up at her. “The children!” he screamed, bloody saliva spraying from his mouth. “Look what you’ve done, bringing her up here. The building is falling apart. My grandfather—”

“You don’t know a goddamned thing,” she hissed at him, baring her teeth. “You sick, disgusting man. I have everything under control. Get out of here!”

Wasserman shook his head. His features clenched, tears wetting the blood at the corner of his eyes. He raised the gun. “I won’t let it happen again,” he said. “I—”

Shelley sensed movement more than she saw it, and suddenly Jeffrey was barreling into Wasserman from the shadows, hitting him low and in the side like a linebacker into a running back. The blow carried Wasserman up and into the air as the gun barked and something whined off into the darkness, and then they both hit the floor, slid, and rolled over into the wall.

Shelley turned back to the girl. Something was wrong. The room temperature had plummeted, and yet she felt uncomfortably warm. She felt as if someone had doused her with kerosene and was about to light a match.

The girl had come several steps into the room now. Her eyes were glassy in the faint light, reflecting something red that grew brighter by the second.

The air seemed to shimmer. Shelley looked around her at the black walls, the waveproof walls that were now glowing orange red, that were rippling like water running down rock, and at the same time she could hardly see through the cloud of steam from her breath. Ice crystals formed in midair and dropped like tiny diamonds at her feet, only to hiss and boil away into mist.

It was all wrong, she shouldn’t be this strong, even with the drugs they had given her….

Shelley’s skin was burning, melting off her bones.

She shrieked, but the sound was lost in the unforming of her lips and the slow slide of flesh from her jaw.

To study the self is to forget the self and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.

In her moment of despair, she clung to this elusive goal, even as her brain boiled inside its bone shell. She still had not found the ten thousand things. Or perhaps she had; perhaps losing yourself meant finding infinity, everything and nothing at once, and the ten thousand things were a metaphor for that boundless stretch of space where time meant nothing, life did not exist, and the world had dissolved into a great, black emptiness.

Her last thoughts were meant for a Christian God, whom she had denounced years ago, and her prayers were reduced to childhood rhymes. Everything was wrong, the world was coming to an end.

Jesus, save me.

Then there was only pain.

—37—

Jess Chambers, crouched just inside the open door, looked up in time to see the final release of Dr. Jean Shelley.

She had seen Evan Wasserman come in, hardly believing her eyes; she thought she had watched him die. Then, even more unbelievingly, Jeffrey had done his heroic part. Even now they were still struggling with each other, but Jeffrey had gotten his arms under the doctor’s armpits and locked his hands behind Wasserman’s head.

The floor had become slick as she gained her feet again and held herself upright against the door frame. It was difficult to see now through the odd mix of heat and cold, as the two met like miniature weather fronts and turned the moisture in the air to steam and then instantly to ice.

Shelley stood a few feet beyond Sarah’s tiny form. Her arms were still outstretched, as if in prayer, but her flesh hung off them like uncooked bread dough. Her shoes had dissolved into the floor, and she stood like a rooted human tree as the walls gave off waves of glittering heat. Jess could feel it burning her skin like the sun.

Within the dripping oval of her face, Shelley’s lips moved. Something popped, and her skin began to smolder. Smoke poured from her hair, her nose and mouth, rose off her body like early-morning steam from a lake.

Then she burst into flame.

Another door flew open and shouts came from the other end of the room. Sarah turned her head, and Jess felt the electrical charge push past her like a breath of wind. The two guards who had begun to draw their weapons now danced in place like two puppets on a string, their limbs jerking and their hair standing on end. Ronald Gee stood just behind them in the doorway, sparks running from his fingers. His clothes had already begun to burn.

The heat and smoke were swiftly overwhelming everything else. Jess found it hard to breathe, and she pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth.

Sarah was moving. Jess’s eyes watered as she tried to watch the girl cross the room, but she had to turn away to catch her breath, and when she turned back, Sarah was gone.

Jess stumbled out into the crackling, open space. Now that Sarah had left, the air had returned to its normal state, and only the fire was left to burn. Somehow it had gotten underneath and in the walls, and up into the roof. In another few minutes this part of the building would be a raging inferno.

The heat was almost unbearable. It was like standing on melting asphalt at twelve noon in the middle of a desert, waves of sickly heat washing over her from all directions.

She shielded her face and ran past the two guards and Gee, who were now sprawled motionless and smoldering across the floor, and out into the hallway. A little easier to breathe out here. Something cracked and shook the floor beneath her feet. She took a gulp of cooler air, coughed up deep hacking mouthfuls of soot and phlegm, and saw the open elevator shaft yawning like a great black mouth. She headed for the stairs.

One floor down, Jess ran past the playroom. Empty, thank God, they had gotten the children out. She continued to the front entrance.

The doors were gone. A ragged hole of concrete and steel took their place. She looked through, out along the path of destruction.

The man in the blue suit was doing a dance on the front steps, his white hair standing on end, his eyes bulging. Smoke curled from within the sleeves of his jacket. His skin crackled. He held a rigid, frozen pose, and then dropped as if suddenly released, rolled limply down the last two steps, and lay still.

Sarah turned on the lawn and faced the street. There were black cars out there, and vans too. The van doors slid open and men in military attack gear jumped out.

Somewhere overhead, Jess heard the chattering thump of a helicopter. She started to move down the steps, hesitated. This was going to get nasty. If Sarah was distracted, they were both dead. She knew that with absolute certainty. It had all gone too far for anything else.

I don’t think they’re going to just let us walk away. But there is another way out.

Her own words, spoken just minutes ago. More true right now than ever before.

It’s time to let it all loose, don’t hold back.

McDwyer looked out over the scene as they came in low over the brush. A few moments ago they had swooped past a series of abandoned buildings, and he thought about landing there and planning a better approach through the ground cover, but decided it would take too long.

Now he was glad he did. He swore as the Sikorsky swooped toward the street. A smoking hole where the doors of the facility should be, windows blown out, and where was the girl? There. On the lawn. This was far worse than he’d feared. She was loose, and nobody had been able to get close enough to her for a clean shot with the drug to dial her down. So much for the ground troops. He spotted several of them, crouched behind cars parked sideways outside the gate. What the fuck were they waiting for anyway?

Then he saw the man jittering on the steps as if he’d caught hold of a live wire, smoke pouring from his head of white hair. Oh, Jesus. What was Berger doing this close? He should have known better…

The situation had just gone from very bad to full-scale disaster. They would not be able to hold off the authorities for long now, even with all the pull they had on the inside. They had to move fast to control the damage, and Berger was way beyond giving orders. It was his turn. Operation Kill-Switch was under way.

McDwyer checked his weapon, shouted at his men to be ready for touchdown.

More black cars squealed to a stop outside the gates, followed by black vans. Men in full combat gear poured out of them.

Then the impossible happened. One of the black cars suddenly flung itself upward, as if ripped from the ground and tossed by a giant hand.

The helicopter swerved in a violent, adrenaline-pumping sideways dive. McDwyer felt a frozen moment of terror as he watched the car’s rear tire slip just inches past the windshield. The pilot shouted and fought with the controls, and for a moment McDwyer thought they were all done. Punch your time cards, gentlemen. But then the chopper righted itself, the skids hit asphalt, and he felt his teeth click together as the car landed somewhere nearby with a bone-rattling crash.

He had the door already open before the pilot cut the engine, and he had grabbed his weapon case and was out and moving just before the world exploded.

Sarah stood on the front walk as the sky over her head turned black. Blood soaked through the bandage on her shoulder. But the pain was nothing now; she let it go with the rest, with the glorious, burning energy searing through her body. The air rippled as she seemed to swell in size, as she spread her arms out to the wind. Blue streaks leapt from her fingers to meet the clouds, touched her face, her hair, formed a halo around her head. She gasped, threw her hands higher, eyes rolling backward into her skull.

Out by the gates a car went flipping end over end through the air, narrowly missing the helicopter, which landed hard in the street.

One of the remaining cars exploded. A ball of yellow flame shot skyward. A van went next, the fireball erupting from the rear gas tank. And then the helicopter, with its rotors still turning lazily in the wind, seemed to puff once and stutter before the tanks went up and it disappeared into a blinding flash of white-yellow heat.

Debris tinkled across pavement, chunks of steaming metal thudding and tumbling across the grass. A piece of someone’s hand, two fingers attached and twitching, landed next to Sarah’s left foot. Across the street, half of a rotor blade buried itself three feet deep into the side of an abandoned row house, the metal end that protruded still smoking.

A man ran screaming across the lawn, his hair on fire. Others within the attack squad who had survived the blasts had gathered their wits about them enough to organize themselves, and the chatter of weapons joined the dull whoosh and crackle of the burning vehicles.

Sarah turned in the direction of the gunfire. The air rippled like a colorless wave passing through, and a crack zigzagged its way across the front lawn toward the guardhouse. The ground opened up and swallowed it with a shriek and a tearing of wood and metal, buckling the gates and melting the asphalt and concrete curb into a gooey mess that looked like a giant stripe of warm chocolate.

The crack continued to snake across the sidewalk, and the front axle of the remaining van fell with a thunk into the gap. The van teetered for a moment on the edge of the wide, black mouth, back end swinging up toward the sky, and then it tipped over the edge and fell with the crunch of shattered glass.

Three men with guns were exposed, still crouching behind where the van used to be. With a grunt of satisfaction she picked them up and hurled them thirty feet backward, right past the quivering rotor blade, through a clapboard wall, and into the room behind it.

The blast from the exploding helicopter felt like a giant hand pressed firmly into McDwyer’s back. The air whooshed from his lungs as the hand gave a violent shove. He was airborne for perhaps ten feet, but kept his wits about him long enough to tuck and roll into the impact with the ground.

Still, stars exploded across his vision with the collision and he lay sprawled for a moment, stunned. The explosions had done something to his hearing. Everything sounded as if it were underwater.

When he got to his feet he was bleeding from badly scraped palms and a gash on his forehead.

He licked his lips and tasted blood. Nothing broken. He glanced over at the front steps of the Wasserman Facility. The girl stood there among the smoking ruins. A mini cyclone swirled about her head, blue lightning flashes rippling through black clouds.

The air temperature had plummeted to something approaching midwinter. And yet the fires still burned, and the heat coming off anything the girl’s mind had touched was like the blast from a furnace.

He thought back to his years of training, clamped down hard, prayed to God for strength. He had never been so scared of anything in his life. All the reports he had read about her were nothing compared to this. She’s some kind of demon.

When he felt the ground shake under his feet and the earth cracked open across the lawn, swallowing everything in its path, he turned and scrabbled across the road to the large, black suitcase that had come to rest near the curb.

He had to get to higher ground, get himself under cover, and find a place to take the shot. A small commercial building was located about a hundred yards down the street. He ducked and ran, moving behind parked cars and darting between open spaces. He heard men screaming, another explosion, things shattering.

The first floor of the building was a pizza parlor, or it had been at one time. Now it looked like a crack den. Two black women and a man with piercings through his nose and the tattoo of a dragon wrapped around his neck huddled against the back wall as he kicked through the door. “You stay away!” the man shouted. He was shivering and he held out a gun. “I called the fucking cops. It’s World War Three out there. Who are they? Arabs? Are they gonna kill us? Why’s it so goddamned cold?”

“Tell me where the stairs are, right now,” McDwyer said, ignoring the gun. “And get the fuck out of sight.”

The man hesitated a moment; then he must have seen something in McDwyer’s eyes and lowered the gun. He led him to a door in the back room. McDwyer slipped quickly up the steps, past three landings and more closed doors, until he reached the roof.

Outside he quickly surveyed the scene: tar and crushed stone flat surface, three-foot-high walls all around. He had no time for testing, had to put things together fast and clean, take the shot, and get out. It was a good spot, plenty of room and the right distance. He could set up on the flat top of a steel vent cover and kneel on the surface of the roof to get her in his sights, all the while keeping himself almost completely concealed.

He set down his case, flipped the latches, and lifted the lid, then set out assembling the unit in thirty seconds flat. The “Light Fifty,” or M82A1 A, was a .50-caliber, semiautomatic, air-cooled rifle with a Unertl 10-power scope. He would use M2 Browning Machine Gun cartridges in this case.

This was too far away to risk a dart shot, and it was too late for that anyway. They had done extensive research into the type of weapon that would be necessary to take the girl down. These rounds were large enough to kill an elephant. They should do the job nicely.

Jess Chambers watched the man from the helicopter as he ran down the street. At first she thought he was running away from them, but then she saw him kick open the door of what looked like some kind of restaurant.

He’s carrying something nasty in that case. The noise had grown deafening all around her now, shrieks both human and inhuman, and particles of ice and dirt whipped at her face. But she did not take her eyes away from that building.

When she saw the wink of something peeking over the rooftop a couple of minutes later, she knew.

She screamed a warning into the wind.

The scope picked up everything, made it just as nice and clean and sharp as a fine sunny day at the beach. The air around her was thick with swirling dust and smoke, but McDwyer was used to conditions of blowing sand in 120-degree heat, and it didn’t shake him now.

One shot, one kill. The sniper’s motto. With the Light Fifty, he could punch a hole through a person’s head from a thousand meters away. How far is her range? he wondered. Could she reach him here?

Enough of this nonsense. He was babbling inside his own mind. He settled her face in his sights, took a deep breath, and let it out in a slow hiss.

His hands were shaking. Why wouldn’t they be still? He blinked and saw a little girl he’d never met. But this was no ordinary girl he was looking at. He had a job to do. Come on, you son of a bitch.

A woman was shouting and gesturing from the front steps, pointing. Inside the eye of that flat, cold scope, Sarah turned to look his way.

Predator to predator, like two lions crouched in the brush.

This time, that split-second difference went the other way.

Jess shouted Sarah’s name again. There, over there. He’s got a gun. At first the girl didn’t seem to hear her, and then her eyes rolled and tried to focus. She glanced at the rooftop where Jess was pointing, and instantly a huge ripple of pure energy went tearing away from her, flattening everything in its path like the blast wave from a bomb, vaporizing the last remaining men where they crouched and hid, parked cars and light posts tossed into the air and tumbling like windblown leaves, as if something immense and invisible had gone lumbering down the street.

A bullet screamed past Sarah’s face and her head snapped back; the bullet ricocheted off the wall of the Wasserman Facility, leaving a six-inch-deep crater in the brick. She moaned. Blood began to ooze from a furrow on the left side of her scalp. The thing that had wormed its way into Jess’s mind clenched violently.

Jess caught another flash of muzzle fire from the roof, and a chunk of steps disintegrated at her feet.

And then the invisible lumbering beast reached the building.

Windows exploded inward as immense pressure came to bear against the walls. For a moment, the structure held, and then with a screech and horrible grinding roar, the lower floors gave way.

It was like a wrecking ball hitting a house of matchsticks. Bits of brick and wood exploded out the back, peppering the surrounding areas with white-hot shrapnel. The top two floors collapsed down into themselves, and a cloud of brick and concrete dust billowed outward and swirled in the wind.

Sarah screamed. She screamed again, as the strange blue fire licked up and down her body and the storm reached a fever pitch.

Jess felt the gathering pressure in her lungs, inside her head, as if she had been grabbed in a vise grip. She took a step forward, then two. Had she been wrong all this time? Was it too late, had they pushed it too far?

You’re hurting me. Please. When we first met you asked for my help. Let me give it to you now. Let me make it better.

At first she didn’t even realize she hadn’t spoken aloud. But Sarah seemed to hear her. When she looked back on it later it was one of the many things she would puzzle over in wonder, but now she didn’t think about any of that. She managed to get down the steps without falling and stood a few feet away.

Sarah was trembling. Blood ran freely down her face. Her eyes glittered blue fire in the deepening dusk. I can’t stop. It’s too hard.

That’s the easy way out. It’s all over now, they’re all gone. You did it. Sarah, did I ever lie to you? Can’t you trust me now?

It hurts! Sarah opened her mouth and let out a soundless scream. She threw her head back and the blue fire swarmed over her. Oh, it hurts….

And Jess Chambers, who had come awake many nights sweating and full of blood and the screech of tires, did not hesitate now. She knew that many of the wounded did not get this chance.

She reached out with both hands and grasped Sarah’s arms just above the elbows.

The strength of it hit her like a train coming down a long straight track. Every muscle in her body lit up and clenched at once, and she found herself unable to move, unable to breathe, as the blue fire ran down and through her like a lightning rod, as sparks jumped from her toes into the ground. A million frozen images flashed through her mind, her life passing in one constant stream of light and dark, neurons firing like a billion stars in the great deep darkness of space.

She tried to cry out, tried to give life to the mindless scream; but nothing came, she saw nothing finally but blackness, and the only sound she heard at the end was the thunderous, throbbing beat of a heart.

—38—

She did not know exactly how long she lay there, but it couldn’t have been as long as it might have seemed, because she woke to the sound of sirens.

She found herself lying stretched full-length on the ground. The spot where she had been standing before was bare and scorched.

The sirens were growing rapidly louder. She sat up, spat out the taste of iron and stale sweat. Her body ached, trembled like a newborn’s. She smelled earth and burned flesh, and smoke from the swiftly growing fire that licked around the edges of the Wasserman Facility and spread through the dry brush in back.

How she had survived it she didn’t know; how could she possibly have survived the sort of jolt she had taken? But the black clouds above her head had broken up and the sky was lighter now. The wind that had come out of nowhere was slackening.

It had ended, far more swiftly than it began.

Sarah lay ten feet away in the grass. Unable to find the strength to stand, Jess crawled to her side. The girl lay on her back, her eyes open and glassy. There was a lot of blood, too much blood. Sudden panic filled Jess’s lungs and made her feel as if she were drowning. No. Not now, not after all that. I won if let you die. The scalp wound looked ugly, but it wasn’t deep. She ripped open Sarah’s top, found the dark, puckered bullet hole high in her shoulder. The bandage had slid off entirely.

Blood oozed up through the hole, more slowly now. She tore a piece of bloody cloth and pressed her palm to it to stop the bleeding.

“You’re all right,” she said. Her throat felt burned and raw as a wound. She gathered the girl’s head into her lap, stroked Sarah’s hair. A tiny spark like static electricity jumped under her hand, while she kept her other palm hard against the gunshot hole. “I told you, I’m going to keep you safe. You hear? You’re going to be just fine."

Sarah gave a great, shuddering sigh. She blinked. “It— hurts,” she said.

“I know. We’ll make it better soon.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean it.”

“Don’t you worry about that. Don’t you worry. What they’ve done to you, they deserve it.”

Tears blurred her vision, turned light into rainbows of color. The hospital had begun to burn faster now. Thicker, black smoke lifted from the roof and drifted lazily in the suddenly calm air.

A few other children emerged from their hiding places. They gathered silently to stare down at the strange couple in the grass like respectful mourners. For a moment this all felt like a dream, and then Jess looked and saw what was left of the man lying at the foot of the steps, hair smoking and skin black and cracked, saw the door blown from its hinges and the darkness inside, and she felt like screaming. She looked down the street at the bodies and the twisted wreckage of cars, and most of all the huge, gaping hole where the sniper’s building had been.

It was desolation, destruction. It was Armageddon. She blinked, seeing everything through a broken prism of light. She could not make it all go away. It was too late for that.

The sirens were very close now. Any moment they would be here.

Sarah coughed and her lips stopped moving. For a moment the air crackled and spat; then the feeling dispersed like smoke from a dying fire, and everything was calm. Jess closed her eyes against the stink of the burn, the shattered remains of what had been left behind.

She waited for somebody to come.