The Mesmerized (30 page)

“I’m completely immune like you,” Deputy
Hatcher’s voice said from above her. “Now get up.”

Lifting her head, Minji stared in shock at
the weapon aimed at her head. “Don’t do this. Please, listen to
reason.”

“Get up!” The coldness in the man’s dark
eyes spoke volumes. He
would
shoot her.

A blast of a car horn echoed through the
night and headlights sliced through the dark. It was the shuttle
bus. Startled, the deputy glanced over his shoulder, the weapon in
his hand wavering.

In that instant, Minji sensed the frigid
invisible tentacle power she’d experienced before. Now that she was
aware of the influence of the two entities, she felt the
difference. This was the mother. And she was furious.

The mesmerized seized the deputy from all
sides, dragging him to the ground.

“Don’t kill him!” Minji shouted. “Don’t kill
him!”

Thrashing beneath the mesmerized, the
deputy’s cries were frantic gibberish. Sweeping Ava up onto her
hip, Minji backed away from the cluster around the screaming
man.

“Please don’t kill him!”

Arthur snapped out of his transfixed state
and screeched in terror. Shoving the mesmerized out of his way, he
darted around the thrashing pile of bodies and raced toward the
door. Minji swung about and followed him.

“Do it again! Freeze him!” Minji urged the
entity within Ava.

The child’s eyes were full of fear. Maybe
she couldn’t do it again. Upon quick reflection, Minji realized the
attacks had been spaced apart. Maybe the entity had to recover each
time before it could act again.

Arthur slammed into the door, pressed a card
against a square of murky glowing glass inset in the wall, and the
steel door slid open in the blink of an eye. Diving inside, Arthur
twisted about and flipped Minji off.

The door banged shut.

“Shit!”

The glass was a dull color now. Minji fished
the card out of her pocket with trembling fingers. The mesmerized
continued to subdue the deputy. Or were they killing him? She could
hear the man screaming, but wouldn’t he be dead by now?

“Arthur is immune to your mother’s power,
but not yours,” Minji said quietly to the entity inside of Ava.
“That’s why things have been so bizarre.”

Then a thought struck Minji so forcibly, she
slumped against the door. It wasn’t the child that had chosen her.
It was the mother. Minji wasn’t immune. The first attacks had been
overlapping each other. Minji remembered vividly going blind and
the visions. She had succumbed to the influence of the entities,
but then it had stopped. Everyone had assumed she was completely
immune. But that wasn’t the case at all.

She’d been chosen.

Finally, the pane of glass lit up again and
Minji slid the card over it.

“Minji!” Alec’s voice called out from amidst
the mesmerized. “Don’t go in!”

“Follow me!”

The door gaped open. A very small, stainless
steel elevator waited. It was only big enough to fit a tall, large
man. Holding Ava firmly against her chest, Minji stepped into the
elevator. Only one person was supposed to enter at a time and when
the door slammed shut, she knew why.

“Two heartbeats detected. Beginning security
protocol,” a voice intoned from above.

There was a terrifying hiss from above her
head and gas filled the elevator. Minji attempted to hold her
breath, while pressing her hand against Ava’s lips. Hopefully it
was just a knock out gas and nothing lethal. Ava’s gaze met hers as
her vision became gray around the edges. Tears dripped from the
corners of Minji’s eyes when she realized she was about to fail.
Now Alec was their only hope. Or would the elevator lock down and
not let him in?

Darkness swallowed her vision and Minji
slumped against the wall. Ava’s tiny hands pressed against her
face, cool and comforting.

Minji’s mind was engulfed in sounds and
sights that sent her to the brink of madness.

Minji opened her eyes when the elevator
doors opened. The gas had been sucked back into the vents and the
air was fresh. A rush of adrenaline made her heart hammer in her
chest in a painful staccato beat. She should be unconscious, taken
down into the depths by the gas in the elevator, but she was
vividly awake. It was the child entity in Ava who was doing it,
keeping her mind alert when her body should be asleep. The fine
spider web tendrils of the child were wrapped around her brain. She
could feel each individual one.

The hallway was surprisingly dull with gray
walls and off-color ceiling tiles with black flecks. The floor was
highly polished concrete. There wasn’t a speck of color anywhere
except for a small plant sitting on what Minji assumed was the
receptionist desk. There was no sign of Arthur.

Stepping forward, Minji peered over the desk
and saw a man in uniform lying alongside a woman. Both were dead
and the stench of decay hung in the air. On the desk under a bit of
clear plastic was a layout of the facility. Minji fished it out and
studied it. A lot of areas were blacked out and some rooms had no
names. Alec had mentioned the name of one of the scientists and it
took her only a few seconds to locate his office. Checking over her
shoulder at the long, dimly lit hallway, she wondered if Arthur had
seen the same layout.

“I’m going to get a weapon,” Minji said to
Ava and the
other
. Though she had no idea how to use a gun,
she supposed she could use it to scare Arthur if she had to. She
ducked around the desk and squatted next to the soldier. The
holster was empty.

“Shit.”

Rushing after Arthur was a bad idea if he
was armed. He was already crazed with grief and highly suspicious
of her and Ava. She was almost certain he would shoot her. Arthur
was immune to the mother entity’s influence, but not the child’s.
If only she could find out how long it would take for the child’s
powers to recover.

Minji studied the diagram again. She was
fairly certain the largest blacked out area was where the doorway
was located. Shoving the card into her jeans, she chewed on her
bottom lip, mulling over a new plan.

Arthur was most likely looking for the
tablet, or the child. Minji couldn’t be sure if Alec had made up
the tablet, or not. If she tried to locate Arthur, he’d probably
shoot her on sight. If she made her way to the control room for the
experiment, then maybe she could find a way to barricade the door
to protect the child until she could figure out what to do
next.

A quick look at the elevator revealed that
the glass panel was muted. Did that mean it was ready and on its
way up to the surface? Or was it still resetting? Either way, she
didn’t have time to wait around for Alec.

“Shit,” she muttered again, then hurried
along the hallway holding Ava on her hip.

Clutching the paper in one hand, she
navigated through the facility’s corridors past rooms littered with
dead bodies. The cold, stale air barely held a whiff of rot.
Perhaps there were special air filters in the air conditioner.
After the last day, Minji was glad for it.

Wary of the hallway leading to a block of
offices, she scampered past it and darted down a stairwell. Worn
concrete steps and yellowish lighting created a bleak, foreboding
atmosphere. The closer she came to the lower floors, the more
misgivings she suffered.

What if Arthur was already down here? She
had passed out in the elevator for a brief period of time. Or
hadn’t it been brief? She actually had no real sense of time
anymore.

At the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated
and timidly poked her head around the corner. A massive room spread
out before her. It was far wider than it was tall, giving it a
squat appearance. The walls were roughly hewn and a matrix of
lights sprawled across the ceiling. A small, one story concrete
structure stood a few feet away. A heavy metal door with a glowing
glass panel stood open at one end.

Cautiously, Minji edged out into the massive
room.

Ava let out a small whimper.

The sound echoed.

Stepping over bodies and pools of blood,
Minji approached the open doorway. Death surrounded her, but she
couldn’t let it affect her. All her energy had to be on saving
everyone. She was almost to the door when another simpering cry
echoed throughout the vast room.

It had to be the
other
.

Reaching the open entryway, she cautiously
peered inside. Lights blinked on the vast array of consoles and
panels and cast an eerie glow over the faces of the dead. A wide
bank of thick windows looked out over the main room. What Minji
hadn’t been able to see on her approach was that near the center of
the room a section was set up with clear plastic sheeting. It
reminded her of a fumigation tent with all the thick hoses snaking
around the exterior and the heavy machinery humming nearby. Within
the plastic tent was a baby incubator.

Ava pointed at the setup and made an odd
noise in her throat.

“That’s you,” Minji whispered.

“Baaby,” Ava answered.

A scuff of a heel jerked Minji’s attention
to the door. A shadow flitted over the threshold and she bolted
behind a bank of large servers.

“Minji?” Alec’s voice whispered. “Minji, you
here?”

“You made it,” she said with relief, coming
out of hiding.

“How did you make it? You should have been
knocked out.” Alec touched her cheek then Ava’s. “Both of you.”

“It’s the child entity.” Minji pointed to
her head. “I felt it do something to my brain to keep me awake. I’m
not sure what. I can’t feel it now though. Are Simone and Bailey
okay?”

“They’re outside waiting. The mesmerized
calmed down after you entered the elevator.”

“Deputy Hatcher?”

“Dead.” Alec sighed.

“So tired of people dying,” Minji
grumbled.

“At least you’re okay. Have you seen
Arthur?”

Minji shook her head. “And he has a gun
now.”

“Shit.” Alec pushed on the door, and it
swung shut with a hiss. “Okay, we need to get this done. Now.”

“Is there really a tablet in that doctor’s
office?”

“No. I lied.” Alec shrugged. “I was trying
to buy us time.” Withdrawing the tablet, Alec typed in a password.
“It wouldn’t have done Arthur any good anyway. He doesn’t know how
to access it.” The screen opened to the application Dr. McCoy had
been working on when she died and Alec exited out. “Okay, the file
has downloaded, so I just have to follow the steps.”

When the manual popped onto the screen,
Minji leaned forward to study it. “Complete with pictures,
huh?”

“Step by step instructions,” Alec gave her a
small grin. “We can do this. Now to find out how to open the
doorway.” Swiping through the directions, Alec’s brow furrowed with
concentration. “Okay, found it.”

“Good, good.”

Lifting his eyes, Alec said, “Are you sure,
Minji? Absolutely sure that the mother is on the other side and
only wants her baby?”

Doubt pricked at her mind.

“Minji?”

“Why are you asking me now?”

“It brought all those people here. Why did
it do that?”

The words almost choked her as Minji placed
the final piece into the puzzle. “So we wouldn’t kill the baby.
Like Deputy Hatcher taking me hostage, she did the same. But she
couldn’t communicate with us.”

Alec hesitated, then said, “Okay. But one or
both of them also killed millions, Minji.”

“They were torn apart. Separated. Afraid.
They’ve both been reaching out to me, Alec.” Though parted by
choice, Minji longed to hold Bailey in her arms again. She could
only imagine the pain of having a child torn away.

“They’re not human, Minji. We are. Our world
needs to come first. If I open that portal, the mother will be
waiting. And that scares me shitless.”

Minji covered her face with both hands.
She’d been so determined to save her family, the world, and the
baby entity, she hadn’t really considered if the mother would take
vengeance on them. What would she do in the mother’s place?

“Is she going to come through and finish
what she’s started, Minji? We have to ask ourselves that.”

“No, no. She won’t. She just wants her
child.” A tiny sliver of doubt still pricked at her. The mother
entity had gone to great lengths to appeal for help. That had to be
important.

“You sound unsure, Minji.”

“No. No. I’m sure,” she responded, lifting
her chin. “I’m sure.”

“Okay then.” Alec exhaled, placing both
hands on the console. “After careful evaluation of the situation, I
have made the decision to open the doorway to return the child.
That’s our story. Understand? I made the choice. Not you. Me.
That’s our official story.”

“Alec...” He sounded like he was taking the
fall for her.

“Minji, I don’t want to set off a nuclear
bomb and kill all those people out there. I don’t want to kill you,
the girls, Simone, Jesse, or your husband. I have sworn a sacred
oath to protect all of you. I am more than willing to give my life
to save the world, but they have no choice.” Alec scrubbed his
knuckles beneath his cheekbones. “I’m so fucking scared, I’m numb.
But I’m also making the choice that if she comes through looking
for vengeance, I
will
activate that bomb.” Pointing between
two consoles, he said, “One opens the portal. The other sets the
bomb. I’m going to set up for both. Okay?”

Wordlessly, Minji nodded.

“Watch the door. If Arthur tries to come in,
the panel will dull. Tell me immediately. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Maybe it was the gas from earlier, or the
rush of adrenaline leaving her system, but exhaustion settled onto
her body like a warm, soggy blanket. Leaning against the wall, she
snuggled Ava against her chest.

“The baby is sad, Mommy. They hurt her when
they made her come here. She wants to go home,” Ava whispered.