Sensing my hesitation, Scott touches my elbow lightly and raises an eyebrow.
“Ready?”
My mouth is dry and my answer comes out as a croak. I moisten my lips and try again.
“Yes.”
He walks from the lift and I follow a step behind. Our footsteps echo across the tiles; his confident, mine hesitant, as we approach an older man with wiry white hair and deep laughter lines. He rises from his seat to greet Scott with a handshake and me with a kindly smile.
“Anna, this is Doctor Pearce,” Scott introduces us. “Doc, this is Anna.”
“It's lovely to meet you dear,” the doctor says, making no attempt to touch me, for which I'm grateful. He's not what I imagined, not by a long shot. I'd been envisioning something more along the lines of the mad professor, syringe in hand, working in a dark laboratory-cum-dungeon. I much prefer the lab I'm standing in to the one in my over-active imagination.
“And you,” I manage, attempting a smile in response.
“You flatter me. I know you youngsters have a hundred places you'd rather be than in my little lab.” His eyes crinkle with mirth and I find myself relaxing.
“Walter is the head scientist here,” Scott explains.
“I won't take up any more of your time than is strictly necessary, dear,” Walter promises, and gestures to a chair beside one of the stainless steel tables. “Would you be so kind as to sit?”
I lower myself cautiously into the chair, with a nervous glance at Scott and then back at Walter. I can feel my heart thudding, but most of my dread has subsided. Walter places a voice recorder on the table between us, and eases into the chair opposite me. Scott chooses not to sit, instead standing by my shoulder. I find his presence reassuring.
“I'm afraid my memory's not what it used to be,” the scientist tells me with a smile, and presses the machine's record button. I catch myself about to chew my nails and thrust my hands into my lap, and wait for him to begin his questions.
“When was the first time you became aware of your talent?”
“On Saturday. At the shopping centre,” I answer.
“Could you tell me what exactly you can do, in your own words?”
“I'm... not really sure. I black out.” I hesitate, and Walter nods his encouragement. “And I wake up somewhere else.”
“And do you have any control over when it happens, or where you awaken?” I shake my head.
“It happens when I get scared, I never know when it's going to happen or where I'm going to end up.”
“That must be quite a terrifying experience,” he nods. “We'll see what we can do to help you understand how to control it.”
“That would be good,” I venture, although it's the understatement of the year. Getting a handle on this craziness would be a huge relief.
In the end Walter questions me for the best part of an hour – what's the furthest I've travelled, what was the last thing I was thinking before each time I shifted, what was the first thing I thought when I woke up. I answer honestly and in as much detail as I can, even when things start to get personal. I’m not sure how relevant my absentee father is, nor the fact that we moved homes twelve times in eight years when I was a kid, but frankly I’d tell him my bra size if he thought for one moment it would help. He doesn’t ask, in case you’re wondering. Finally, he reaches over and switches off the recorder.
“Thank you for your time,” he says, and rises to his feet with an audible click from his knees. I get up, blinking in surprise.
“That's it? No tests, or...?”
“Doctor Maynard will take some blood for us to run tests on, but your answers will suffice for the time being. We'll need to speak to you again later.”
“Thank you.”
“You're most welcome, my dear.”
I look at Scott, who is still standing in the same position he adopted at my shoulder, and from which he hasn't moved a muscle throughout the entire interview. I wonder if his legs have seized up from being immobile for so long. I struggle to stay still for more than a few minutes without fidgeting.
He leads me to the back of the lab, and I see a door set into the wall, with a plaque on it reading ‘Medical’. Scott taps twice on the door, and a voice from within invites us to enter. We do so, shutting the door behind us. The room itself is quite small, with the same décor as the lab, and with the added odour of disinfectant. It reminds me of a hospital, but without the beds, nurses and patients, which seems like a strange comparison, but then it’s a strange place. The single occupant sits behind a dark wooden desk which is occupied primarily by a computer and keyboard. He wears a white doctor's coat, and has a stethoscope draped around his neck. He's younger than I expect, in his early thirties, with short dark hair and a serious expression.
“Ah, Scott, I was expecting you,” he says as he rises to his feet, and then transfers his attention to me. “And you must be Miss Mason.”
He doesn't seem to expect an answer so I don't bother to give one, instead taking a moment to look around the room. Several framed certificates line the sterile white walls, listing the achievements and qualifications of one Doctor Maynard. They're the only personal touches to the entire room. A medical bed with a paper sheet is tucked against one wall, with a tray of equipment beside it. I don’t look too closely at that. A door is set into the wall beside it, and I wonder where it leads. Maybe that's where the torture chamber is.
Scott coughs and looks pointedly at me.
“I'm sorry?”
“I said, please take a seat.” Maynard is gesturing to the bed, so I hop up onto it, my feet dangling over the edge.
“Roll up your left sleeve.”
I do so, feeling a vague sense of unease as he pulls on a pair of latex gloves and picks up a strip of rubber. He ties the tourniquet around my upper arm and instructs me to make a fist. I clench my hand, and he takes a swab, dips it into some disinfectant, and rubs it around the vein near my elbow. The cold liquid sends a shudder through me, though it's more to do with the knowledge of what's coming than the temperature of the disinfectant. I've spent years avoiding my doctor like the plague because he's overly fond of pricking me with needles, and somehow here I am, sitting on a medical trolley, waiting for yet another doctor to stick me without a single objection. Funny how life works.
He takes a syringe from an unopened packet and inspects the needle closely. Sadist. I look away, staring deliberately over his shoulder. My eyes settle on Scott, who is watching me with a calm expression. I notice he's still wearing his bike boots from earlier, and smile. His Bandit is one hell of a machine. I replay the ride in my mind, the speed, the wind, the rush of adrenaline as the bike leaned low into the sweeping corners. The needle pricks my arm and I bite back a yelp as it slides into my vein and sucks up my blood like a tiny little vampire. I don't look to see how much he's taking, but he’s taking his sweet time about it. It's not that it hurts – well, not much anyway, but the sight of the needle sticking into my arm creeps me out. It's not natural.
“Okay, that part's done,” the doctor says, setting the needle down on a tray beside me. He gives me a small dressing to hold against the wound until the bleeding stops, then hands me a gown and directs me to a curtain.
“You can get changed behind there.”
Changed? That's the first I've heard of this. Scott gives me a reassuring nod which fails to reassure, but I'll have to start trusting these people at some point. Might as well be now. I pick up the gown and walk behind the screen. I strip and pull on the gown, immediately feeling more vulnerable. Reluctantly I step back into view, shuffling my bare feet across the tiles.
“Through here, please.” Maynard holds open the door at the back of the room and I walk through. He turns to Scott.
“You'll need to wait out here.”
I'm about to protest, but Maynard has already shut the door. My heart is thumping against my chest again and I can feel the blood pulsing in my fingertips. I remind myself that I'm supposed to be trusting
him, and that if Scott was worried he would have insisted on accompanying me.
This room is much bigger than the last, and sectioned off by a number of green medical screens. The area we're in is dominated by large diagnostic machines that I vaguely recognise from my former obsession with the TV show Casualty. One is an MRI, and another is a CT scanner. There's an X-ray, too, and several pieces that I don't recognise.
Maynard steers me towards the MRI. He asks me to lie back, and hands me a small box with a button on it.
“The scan will take about half an hour. You'll need to lie very still. If you have a problem, press the button.”
I lean my head back on the padded bench, and close my eyes, picturing the tranquil lake from earlier as the bench slides slowly inside the machine.
Half an hour is a long time to lie completely still in an alien environment, when your entire world has been turned upside down in the last three days. You can get a lot of thinking done, which isn't necessarily a good thing, particularly when you're trying your damnedest not to freak out and shift half-way through the procedure. Somehow I manage it though, and the bench eventually slides me back out into the bright lighting of the medical room. I sit up slowly and swing my legs over the side of the bench, stretching out the kinks in my muscles.
“What's next, doc?”
Chapter Eight
If I’d realised Maynard was going to take that as an invitation to run every test known to mankind, I would have phrased the question differently. It’s several hours later when I finally trudge out of his office, letting the door swing shut behind me. AbGen’s nothing if not thorough, I’ll give them that. The med wing was filled with more equipment than my local hospital, and Maynard had been on some sort of personal crusade to use each piece. I always knew doctors were sadists at heart.
I glance around the brightly lit laboratory filled with white-coated scientists attending industriously to their computers and charts, and my eyebrows knit together – there’s no sign of Scott. He’s obviously sloped off and abandoned me to my doctor-haunted fate.
“Traitor,” I mutter, and notice the closest white coat giving me a funny look. I realise it’s probably not normal to stand around talking to yourself, so I make a beeline for the lift doors before anyone can decide I need a psychiatric evaluation. Before I get there, I hear heels clicking rapidly across the tiled flooring behind me.
“Anna!”
I turn and see Helen hurrying towards me, and wait for her to catch up.
“Scott asked me to wait for you – he thought you’d want to see a friendly face after going through Maynard’s tests,” she says, by way of explanation.
“Yeah… Where is he, anyway?”
“Gardiner wanted to see him and Nathan. Come on, let’s head over to the cafeteria. We can get a coffee while we wait for them.”
We carry on walking towards the lift, and I watch as she presses her thumb against a small panel on the wall.
“What did Gardiner want?” I ask as the door slides open. We step inside and she presses a button on the display marked Upper Basement. The door rolls shut silently and the lift starts to move.
“You threw a bit of a spanner in the works when you asked for Scott as your handler,” she says with a smile. “After all, where does that leave his handler?”
“Oh.” I frown. I hadn’t thought of that. In fact, it hadn’t even occurred to me that Nathan was his handler until now. I guess I’d imagined the handler-absa relationship a little differently to what I’d seen between them.
“Don’t worry,” she says as we exit the lift into a long corridor lined with doors. “They’ll work something out. Gardiner was pretty keen to have you on the team.”
“Why?”
She chuckles as she pushes open the first door we come to.
“You’re the ultimate spy, Anna. There's nowhere you can’t go, and all without passing a single person.”
I consider that as I glance around the cafeteria – it looks like any canteen the world over, if you ignored the lack of windows, and hope the shudder that ran through me wasn’t too obvious. Spying on who? I quickly bury the thought: I’m committed now. At a couple of the tables we pass a few people sit in conversation, but most of them are empty. There’s a service hatch set into one of the walls and that’s where we’re heading.
“Some spy. They won’t need to see me coming – they can just arrest me while I’m lying there unconscious.”
We stop at the hatch and she smiles a greeting at the man standing behind it.
“Morning, Helen, what can I get you?” he asks.
“Hi Eric. Two coffees please.”
He nods and presses a button on a machine inside the kitchen, and a moment later hands through our cups. We claim one of the tables and continue our conversation.
“Yeah, I heard you were having some issues.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” I take a sip of my coffee and am pleasantly surprised – Eric’s machine makes a decent cup. “Yesterday I woke up in the middle of a field. I could ruin a lot of clothes getting the hang of this.”
She nods.
“It was different for me; people started acting weirdly around me. It took me a long time to realise I was even doing anything.”
“Scott says you can change people’s perception of you.” I can’t quite work out how to word what I want to ask, but Helen gets where I’m going.
“That’s not quite it, though I suppose it’s as good an explanation as any. It's difficult to explain. I can show you, if you want?”
“I’d like that.”
“It can get pretty intense,” she warns. “What you felt yesterday was just a mild dose.”
“I can handle it.”
Or so I thought. But the sudden sensation running through me, it’s… I feel like I've known Helen my entire life, like I could share my darkest secrets with her. In fact, I want to, I need to. I trust her so strongly that it’s physically painful to think that she might have an agenda, and the feeling of acceptance, it’s so intense. Every other thought is washed from my mind. I close my eyes and bask in the sensation.
Suddenly it's gone. I open my eyes and freeze, staring in horror at the woman in front of me. Cold dread wells in my stomach and spreads through my veins, freezing me from the inside out. I feel the hairs on my arms stand up as the fear reaches my throat. My mouth pops open but no sound comes out, though I can feel my jaw working frantically. I leap back, knocking my chair over in the process. I need to get away from her, I’ve got to get out of this place, I’ve got to–
A hand lands on my shoulder. I jump and spin around.
“Whoa, easy.”
I blink several times rapidly and Scott comes into focus. I take a shaky breath.
“What are you doing?” he snaps at Helen. “She doesn’t have a handle on her talent yet – she could have shifted right out of here!”
“Relax,” she says, apparently unperturbed. “She’s tougher than you give her credit for.”
“She was about to shift.”
“I’m fine,” I promise him. He stares at me for a moment, then nods and stoops to right my chair. I perch on it with a grateful smile, and turn back to Helen.
“That was incredible!” The feeling of dread is completely gone.
“It has its uses.”
With a sigh, Scott pulls out a chair and sits down.
“If you girls are done playing?”
“Sorry, Scott,” Helen says, batting her eyelashes at him playfully. Scott rolls his eyes.
“Helen was just telling me about her talent,” I say, reaching for my coffee cup. “I can’t imagine having that level of control.”
“It takes a while,” she acknowledges.
I pause thoughtfully. It’s hard to imagine Helen losing control of anything; she always seems so composed.
“How long did it take you?”
“Eighteen months, give or take. But then I didn’t have access to any of this.” She gestures to the roo
m at large. “By the time Scott discovered me, I already had it well under control.
“Gave me quite the run-around, too,” he adds.
She chuckles.
“The first time I met him, I thought he was a salesman.”
“A salesman, in this suit,” he interjects, plucking at his lapel.
“So I sent him running. It wasn’t until he came back that I realised he was something else, and I used my little trick to get him to tell me everything.”
I remember the compulsion I felt earlier and suppress a shudder – I was completely in Helen’s thrall. It’s easy to imagine why Scott was unable to resist.
“Yes, hilarious. You know Gardiner nearly demoted me over that, right?”
“Speaking of Gardiner…” Helen says, turning the conversation to more serious issues.
“Yeah, he wants to see you when you’re done here.”
Helen drains the dregs from her cup and rises.
“See you later, Anna.”
“Bye, Helen.”
“If you're done, we should probably get going too,” Scott tells me.
“Where are we going?” I ask, rising from my seat.
“Doctor Harwood is waiting to see you.”
“Another doctor?” I ask, raising my eyebrows and feeling my enthusiasm drain. “How can there possibly be any tests left to run?”
“Doctor Harwood is a psychiatrist,” Scott clarifies with a smile. I baulk and my feet stop moving of their own accord. Scott makes it a few more steps before he realises I'm not with him, but seems relieved to see me behind him – presumably he's pleased I haven't shifted, though that's only because I don't have enough control yet. Otherwise I'd be long gone.
“A psychiatrist?” I manage to croak.
“It's just routine,” he assures me. “There's nothing to worry about.”
Nothing to worry about now, I consider pointing out; it might be a different story by the time they've finished poking around inside my head. Instead I sigh, and acknowledge that I don't really have a good enough excuse to get out of it: normal people don't lose it about things like routine psych assessments.
Awakening (TalentBorn Book 1) Page 7
