Born to Darkness (5 page)

“Computer, access JB-one,” Bach told the computer. “Volume off, please.”

There was no need for the computer to go droning on with his scan results.

“Computer, audio notify,” Elliot said, overriding Bach’s command, “any unusual readings.”

“There won’t be any,” Bach told him.

Elliot gave him a sunny smile. “Getting an official, documented
verification of that from your med scan will make me tremendously happy. Now, stay still.”

Bach didn’t. He sat up. “First, just … Tell me if you think Nathan’s got a shot.”

“He does,” Elliot said. “You know that. They all do.”

Of course, that was just Elliot being optimistic. They’d yet to save a single jokering addict here at OI. But one of these days, they’d unlock the mysteries of this devastating drug. Bach knew that Elliot was certain of that.

“Brain damage?” he asked.

“Undetermined.” Elliot paused. “But likely.”

Bach already knew that, too, and he nodded. And then he sat back and held still, and the scanner clicked on.

“Hempford definitely double-dosed,” Elliot said, as he checked the test results that were already filling the computer monitor. “And as far as we can tell, the drug was from the same batch we’ve been seeing over the past few months. That shit is strong, and
shit
’s the scientific term, Doctor. Part of the filler is some kind of electrolyte sports drink and blah blah blah. I’ve already zapped you a file of my report.” He glanced over his shoulder at Bach. “Somehow you always get me talking first. If I didn’t know myself better, I’d wonder if you weren’t jedi-ing me.
These aren’t the droids we’re looking for
. My questions for
you
, Obi-Wan, are more along the WTF line. Like,
seriously
? Hempford was immune to
everything
you threw at him, except this mojo you described as a
projected wall of pain
?”

The scanner chimed as it clicked off, and Bach sat back up and shook his head. “He was immune to everything we
tried
throwing at him,” he said, reiterating the wording from his own report. “There wasn’t a lot of time for experimentation. The reason we knew to try projecting pain was because, early on in the altercation, Mac injured her ankle—pretty badly, I think. You should check, it might even be broken.”

“She kinda needs to show up for that, but do go on. She injured her ankle and …?”

“Because Hempford was a force-bender,
Mac
was getting hit by
everything I was throwing at
him
, and she couldn’t handle that
and
shield her pain. At least not during that initial burst when she was first injured.” Bach rotated his own ankle at the memory. It was fine now, but he, too, had gotten a taste of the intense burn. “The joker apparently wasn’t able to block her pain
or
bounce it back toward us, so once we figured that out, we blasted him with everything we had.”

“Physical pain.” Behind his dark-rimmed glasses, Elliot’s blue eyes were skeptical. “And that was enough to knock him out?”

“Has Mac submitted her report?”

“Answering a question with a question,” Elliot observed, turning to lean against the comm-station, his arms crossed. “Very interesting. No, she has not. And what, pray tell, will I find in Dr. Mackenzie’s intentionally brain-numbing dry list of facts when she finally
does
get around to doing her paperwork?”

“It wasn’t just physical pain. It was …” Bach just said it. “Emotional. Also.”

Elliot blinked once, but wisely didn’t comment. Instead, he turned back to the computer, checking the final results of Bach’s med scan.

“Knowing Mac, she might not mention it,” Bach continued. “But I’ve been thinking about it, and … It’s important that you know.”

“Science over privacy, huh?” Elliot said. “I’m not sure I’d be willing to play
that
game.”

“I trust you,” Bach told him.

“I’m honored,” Elliot said, glancing at him again. “But you know—and you
do
know—that if this turns out to be relevant, it’s going to have to go into the official report.”

And that was, indeed, the very opposite of private.

“With that said,” Elliot continued, “my next question is about the specific nature of—”

“That,” Bach interrupted him, “
isn’t
important.”

“I disagree,” Elliot said evenly, as he crossed the room and tossed Bach his pants. “The memories of emotional pain caused by
being bullied as a child light up different sections of the brain than, say, memories of pain caused by the death of a parent. And that’s different,
too
, than—”

“I lost the only woman I ever loved,” Bach said as he slipped on his jeans and fastened them. When he said it aloud, it seemed so simple, but it was, in truth, far more complicated. He stood up and crossed toward his sweater, pulling it over his head before adding, “She died, in part because of me, in part because of circumstances beyond my control. I accept that and forgive myself, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. And that’s … all you need to know.”

Again, Elliot tried to hide his surprise, but then he just gave up. “I’m so sorry, Joseph,” he said. And he was. Bach could feel the sympathy radiating off of the man.

There was envy there, too. For years, Elliot had been in a marriage that he’d thought was rock solid, when in fact his husband, Mark, had cheated on him repeatedly. It had been three years since their divorce, and Bach knew that Elliot was still wounded. He’d come to the conclusion, though, that Mark simply hadn’t been able to love Elliot—at least not the way that Elliot had loved Mark. Or so Elliot had told Bach.

“I’m sorry, too,” Bach said as jammed his feet back into his boots. “I take it I’m cleared to leave.”

“You’re showing signs of slight dehydration, and your blood sugar’s a little low,” Elliot reported. “It’s not out of normal range, but I know you better than the computer does. You’ve also got some blood vessel constriction—again very slight. But it makes me think there’s a migraine out there with your name on it, so heads up.”

Bach nodded. “I’m already aware of that, and adjusting.”

“Your back’s fine.”

“I know.”

“There’s bruising on your left cheekbone,” Elliot told him, “but it’s fading fast. When
was
the last time, I wonder, that you took a hit to the face?”

A good question. “A long time ago.”

“I’ll bet. Knowing this guy was able to get in a shot like that is alarming,” Elliot said. “And speaking of alarming? Here’s a fun fact about tonight’s joker: He wasn’t a frequent flier. Tonight was his very first injection.”

Bach looked sharply at the other doctor.

“Yeah,” Elliot said, drawing the word out.

“He jokered,” Bach needed to clarify. “He went completely insane—on his
first ever
injection of Destiny? You’re certain of that.”

“We’ll test him again,” Elliot said. “But three times so far, the answer’s been
yes
.”

“That’s … not good.”

“I hear you,” Elliot said with an equal amount of grim. “Oh, and something else came in that you’re going to hate. I mean, if you allowed yourself to. You know, hate. And yes, I find myself stalling …”

This was going to be bad. Bach made himself breathe. “Just tell me.”

“Promise you won’t hit me with a wall of pain and fry my brain?”

“Not funny,” Bach said.

“Yeah, it kinda was,” Elliot pointed out. “The joke being that’d you’d just randomly start unleashing your heretofore unacknowledged inner darkness and—”

“Did I actually
fry
Hempford’s brain?” Bach had to ask. “Because Mac got hit by it, too.”

“You take things so literally,” Elliot said. “And no. The drugs fried his brain. But you definitely added a jalapeño garnish. I doubt, though, that it was something Mac couldn’t handle. Although it
would
be nice if she came in so we could check her out.”

Bach just waited.

And Elliot finally said, “Nika Taylor, age thirteen. The Twenty who popped to the top of your to-recruit list of Potentials? Her sister
just
filed a missing persons report with the Boston Police.
The girl vanished on her way home from school today.” He moved toward the wall station. “If you want I can …”

But Bach shook his head. He didn’t have to use the computer to access the file. He knew exactly which girl Elliot was talking about. Out of the dozens of recently identified candidates for OI’s training program for thirteen-to-fifteen-year-olds, Nika Taylor had an incredible natural talent, and by far the greatest raw potential. She’d appeared on Bach’s list a mere hour before the police had called, asking for that assist with Nathan Hempford.

Out of all of the bad news this night had brought, this was the worst.

Nika Taylor’s abduction—and it was an abduction, Bach didn’t doubt that for a moment—meant that the very bad people who manufactured Destiny, the drug that was illegally distributed and sold to hapless fools like Hempford, had access to the same information that Bach and the Obermeyer Institute did.

Not only that, but they now apparently got that information hours earlier than OI’s analysis team.

Bach jammed his arms into his overcoat, because impending migraine be damned—he was going back out into the night. “Send the girl’s home address to my car’s GPS.”

“Already done,” Elliot said, raising his voice as Bach went out the door. “Food and drink, Maestro! And do me a pretty and call Mac? She’s ducking my calls, but maybe she’ll talk to you. I want her butt in here, and I want it now!”

“Hey, babe, I’m …”
Home
, Mac had been about to say. Except Justin wasn’t there. And he wasn’t merely out with some friends for the evening. He was gone—and he’d been gone for at least several days.
And
he’d been annoyed with her when he’d left. She could still feel his lingering frustration as she stepped into the apartment—his emotions had been that strong.

She limped farther inside and closed the door by leaning on it. She’d stopped at the drugstore on her way here, and she tossed the
bag with her purchases on the sofa, even as she reached for her phone to check her messages.

Bach, Diaz, and Elliot had all called within the past twenty minutes. It was a no-brainer that they were looking for her—they knew she’d been hurt.

Her intention had been to make a quick pit stop here and kill two birds with one stone—get Justin to stop whining by delivering him some immediate gratification,
and
get her ankle healed to a level where she wouldn’t be benched for days or even weeks.

She scrolled past Elliot’s latest text—
Where ARE you?
—and went back through several days’ worth of messages from her OI co-workers to last Wednesday, where there had been three missed calls from Justin, all in a row. She’d made note of it at the time, but had been too busy to listen, let alone call him back. Going backward chronologically, she saw that he’d also called on Tuesday, twice, and once each on Monday, Sunday, Saturday, and last Friday.

Those calls had all slipped past her radar. Damn, she was a shitty girlfriend.

It was possible he’d gotten a job out of town, maybe even gone on tour.

Justin was an actor, and even though he’d been going on auditions steadily since he’d graduated from Emerson College last year, he’d yet to get more than a callback, so she was skeptical. Still, there was a first time for everything.

Fingers crossed, Mac started with his most recent message, highlighting it and putting the phone to her ear to listen.

“It’s me.” Justin sounded pissed off, which was usually the way his phone messages went. No news there. “I didn’t want to do this via voice mail, but since you’re not going to call me back or even bother to stop by, I don’t have much choice, do I?” He took a deep breath. “Look, I met someone at work—Sandi. I told you about her—she worked the drive-through? At first we were just friends, but then … I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did, and … God, Mac, you know how much I appreciate all you’ve done for me. And I can’t quite believe I’m doing this, but … Sandi’s great, and
she actually wants more from me than the random booty call, so …”

This was entirely Mac’s fault. She’d put too much faith in her power to enthrall, combined with Justin’s selfishly opportunistic greed, and she’d let too much time lapse between her visits.

“Her dad manages a Big Box, back in Ohio, outside of Columbus, and he can get me a job,” Justin’s voice mail went on. “I suck at being an actor, and I suck even more at being a fry-cook, so … I’m going to Ohio with Sandi, and … I’m sorry, Mac. I really am. I didn’t want to tell you like this. I hope … Well, I hope, someday, that you find what you’re looking for.”

And with that, he ended the message.

Truth was, he
wouldn’t
have told her any other way than over the phone. If she’d called him back and he’d asked her to come see him …?

All she would have had to do was step through the door, and he’d instantly be dazzled, all of his childish petulance gone. He’d be like,
Sandi who
? In fact, last time Mac had been here he’d brought the other girl up in conversation. But then he’d looked a little puzzled, as if he’d forgotten what he was going to say about her.