Collide (16 page)

“Five beds,” I say as I point to the sleeping quarters within the two rooms. “They were expecting us, I guess. All of us.”

“Mom?” Josh calls out. No sound returns. “Dad?”

“Maya?” I yell, knowing no one will respond.

“They’re not here.” David walks into the farthest room, his eyes wide and a hint of worry in his voice. “I remember this place,” he says with a distant tone.

“You do?” I ask. I remember it too. I walk into one of the rooms and inhale a sharp breath. Laughter fills my head as distant memories, flashes really, open across my vision. Mari and Maya laugh as we jump on the beds, share secrets, and braid each other’s hair. It’s so normal, so happy. So different from the life I’ve lived since.

“Yeah. Josh and I slept in this room,” David says pointing to the room opposite mine. “You were in that room. With—”

“Maya and Mari. I remember,” I say, the images of the girls still fresh in my head. “We came here on breaks from the lab. Lived her over part of a summer.” More flashes of that life bloom through me. “I was happy here.”

Josh paces the open space, his face contorted with concern. “Come on,” he says without offering more.

He’s up the stairs and wandering into the back rooms of the house before David and I can reach him.

“What’s going on?” David asks.

Josh ignores him as he walks into an office at the back corner of the house. The walls are the same pale yellow as the other rooms. Light streams through leaded glass windows, casting patterned shadows across the wall and floor. The furniture is sparse: A modest desk, two file cabinets in matching cherry wood, and two oversized chairs. Articles and pictures cover the walls, joined together by string in a story web that terrifies me. “X-men: Real or Fiction.” “Man killed by unexplained means.” “Is paranormal activity real?” “Heroes? I think not.” The headlines scream at me, the story of my life, a world I thought only existed in the depths of my dreams, on display.

“Damn,” David says under his breath, as much taken aback as I am by the scene. “Who did this?”

“I don’t know,” Josh says.

“Are we safe here?” I ask. My
gifts
tell me the place in empty, has been for a while. But the evidence around me screams something else entirely. “Maybe we need to leave.”

“No,” Josh says before my words fully form. “Mom and Dad said to come here.”

“And they aren’t here, are they?”

“They will be. They
have
to be.” The fear in his voice sends chills down my spine. I’ve never heard that desperate tone before, never known Josh to be afraid.

My eyes roll back and I scan the house, the cornfields surrounding it, the lake. There is nothing here; no evidence of Mom and Dad, nothing of Maya. No danger of any kind.

Not yet.

“Besides, the best chance we have of figuring out what’s happening is here. We stay.” There was no point in arguing, the finality of Josh’s words complete. “Help me look through these files,” he says as he opens the top drawer of the nearest file cabinet.

Afternoon quickly passes to dusk, as the sky changes from blue to deep hues of crimson and orange, washing the walls in a dusky haze of color. We’ve spent the last several hours poring through every scrap of paper in the office. Nothing new screams up from the pages. Mom and Dad worked for the CIA, scientists for Project Stargate and later, the Solomon experiments, both designed to prove the existence of paranormal abilities and develop their use for the military. Several pictures and newspaper articles chronicle their work, their meetings with White House officials, interviews with hungry journalists. They look so young, wide-eyed and optimistic. The papers called them radical. Crazy, even. The notes from the actual research tell a different story, validating much of their rhetoric.

The experiments had proven the existence of psychic phenomenon; like I really needed any more proof. My little game with the soap was more than enough to turn me into a believer. What the articles and papers did not disclose is why the experiments ended. One day they existed, and the next—nothing, as though they’d never happened at all. No follow-up reports, no innuendos about a government cover-up. Everything just stopped.

“There’s nothing here,” David finally says, voicing my thoughts.

“Keep looking.” Josh starts to go through a large stack on the desk for the fifth time. “We have to find something, anything, to tell us where to look for them.” His desperation is palpable.

“We’ve gone through everything for the past four hours, Josh. I’m telling you, there’s nothing here. You need to let it go.”

“No!” He snaps.

I walk toward him and push aside the papers on the desk. “Stop, Josh. It’s over,” I say, my concern echoed in his eyes. “Wherever they are, we aren’t going to find the answers in these papers.”

“What about this?”

We turn to David who’s waving a large plastic bag filled with papers he’d retrieved from the second file cabinet.

“I found this taped to the top of the drawer. The plastic snagged on the file hangers and loosened enough for me to grab it.” David drops the bag on the desk in front of us.

I scoop up the bag, ripping through the plastic to get to an old journal.

“That’s not all,” David says. “I found this, too.” He holds up a micro-recorder. “It was lodged between the file cabinet and the wall, tucked aside like it was pushed or kicked.”

I snatch the tape and toss it to Josh. “Find something to play this thing,” I say as I return my focus to the old leather-bound journal. I lean on the edge of the desk and carefully open the book, noting every smeared and coffee-stained edge. “Mom’s journal.”

Josh is too busy looking for something to play the micro tape o to register my words. David isn’t. He stands behind me, reading the stained pages over my shoulder. My body reacts and a chill spreads across my shoulders.

“This is
her
journal? From the experiments?” His warm breath tickles my ear as he leans closer.

“Yes,” I say. My treacherous voice reacts more than I intend, something not lost on David as he steps even closer.

David lays his hands on mine and turns the pages. Each page is dated, starting in June of 2002 and ending several months later. Mom chronicles the experiments, picking the subjects, her pride when Josh and I were chosen.

A few pages into the journal, her tone changes from elation to something else, something darker.
I’ve managed to keep their identities hidden from him for now. Kyle plays his part of the farce well, but how long with he continue to believe that I love Kyle and not him. How long until he riddles out the true lineage of his favorite recruits? I feel his connection to them both. Part of him already knows the truth, regardless of what Kyle and I do to hide it from them. I can’t even imagine what would happen if he decided to ask the children themselves—if
they
understood the truth
. The fear laced in Mom’s words is unmistakable. David turns the pages as we read more, riveted by her words . . .

He thinks the experiments are a success, believes he’s finally found someone who can fulfill his mission. Someone he can train. I shudder when I think of his plans for them, for her. He’ll turn her into a monster, I know it. And she isn’t, no matter what he thinks she’s capable of. I need to get her away while I can. Kyle’s onboard. So is Jason. They both sense the same danger. But our plan . . . it’s risky. I’ve never been one to trust the government to police itself. I have no choice now. I must get the children out. Mine, Jason’s. All of them. Before it’s too late and they’re too far gone to be rehabilitated.

David turns the page. And another. Nothing but wrinkled coffee-stained pages.

“Josh,” I say, desperate for more answers. “Did you find a player? Anything?”

Josh riffles through the desk, opening and closing the drawers with increased vigor. “Hold on,” he says as he continues the search. “Got it!” Josh waves a small micro recorder in his hand, pushing buttons. His smile fades. “Batteries. I need batteries.”

More drawers and cabinets open and close. Josh leaves the room grumbling to himself. David takes the journal from my shaking hands and carefully places it back into the ripped plastic bag.

“She’s okay, you know. They both are. I’m sure of it.” His voice holds a promise I won’t—can’t—acknowledge.

“Don’t say things you can’t be sure of, things that may not be true. I heard the gunshots, her screams. They’re dead.” The detachment in my voice startles even me. “Probably.”

Before David can respond, Josh runs back into the office. “Guys! Listen.” He pushes the play arrow on the small micro-recorder. Mom’s voice emanates from the small speaker. It fills the room as water overtakes my eyes.

“Hi Josh and Dakota.” My heart clenches at the sound of Mom’s voice. “If you’re listening to this tape then something bad has happened and the safe house is now compromised.”

Her voice is strong, confident. She sounds exactly like my mother, not a younger version of her, but the way she sounded at the hospital when she challenged Dr. Donaldson. Or in the car when she ordered me to run the day my world imploded.

“You have a ton of questions, no doubt, and I want to answer what I can. Help you, if possible. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now about your gifts. I need you to know that neither of you should feel scared or ashamed of them. They are gifts. Things to be explored and celebrated, not feared. Not everyone in the world will agree with me. Many will hunt you because of what you can do. Exploit your talents. I tried to protect you from those people. Sadly, I fear I’ve failed. You are all in grave danger if I did.

“The experiments I allowed you to be part of were only supposed to train your abilities, bring them under your control. They were not supposed to be dangerous in any way. I wanted you to become comfortable with all you could do or be, avoid the fears I lived with in my youth. I wanted all of the recruits to feel such confidence. But there were others with different agendas. They saw your gifts as a source of power to be controlled. They sought to turn you into soldiers, to destroy the beauty of your precious abilities and train you into monsters. They wanted assassins.

“I refused to let that happen to any of you. So I did . . . we did . . . things, desperate things, to keep you safe. Your memories, your life, everything you believed to be true—we changed it all. I needed to make sure they’d never find you. I had to ensure that
he
couldn’t find you again, that your own dreams and thoughts wouldn’t lead him to you. I wanted us to start over, without your gifts and without the threat of violence for which you were all so well trained.

“Outrunning your destiny, if it is even possible, comes with a hefty price. I’m afraid the debt of our decisions so many years ago is now due. The people coming for you will stop at nothing to reclaim their property, to bring all of you back under their control. They will hunt you until you are forced to join them. Or, you’re dead.

“Don’t be persuaded by them or the lives they promise for you. Don’t let them get you and take away everything that you are, everything that you can be. I love you both very much. I don’t regret any part of my life with you, other than the lies I was forced to tell—the lies I had to believe in order to keep you safe.

“No matter what happens, please remember this:

“You weren’t born killers. You can choose not to be killers now.

“I hope that you can all forgive me—”

Mom’s voice is cut off mid-sentence. I stare at the micro recorder unable to move. Tears, hot and angry, spill from my eyes.

“We can’t stay here.” Josh speaks first as he quickly shoves the recorder, the journal and some other files into his backpack. “We have to go. They’re probably watching the place.”

“W-what? Who?” My brain refuses to process the events.

“Come on,” Josh urges. “We’ll find a motel or something and stake out the house until someone comes back.” Josh grabs my arm and pulls me out as David follows. “Then we’ll follow them to Mom and Dad.”

“Good plan,” David says, closing the door to the office behind us.

“That’s not a plan. Were we listening to the same tape?”

“I’m not arguing with you about this. We’re finding a place to stay and staking out the house. Period.”