The Delphi Revolution (The Delphi Trilogy Book 3)

by Rysa Walker

  But what good does it do if the person who lives next to you is a psychic? He can rob you blind without you even knowing it. Your bank account numbers, passwords, and pretty much anything else of yours is his for the taking.

  The president and Congress have done nothing to protect us from this threat. Our local and state officials are useless as well. It’s time for a new leader who understands the only way we can be protected is by universal testing and removal of anyone infected with this plague. Senator Cregg has promised he will mandate testing on day one if elected and that all Delphi psychics will be housed in facilities where they cannot prey on law-abiding Americans.

  —Dwight Witcher, Elberfeld

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Port Deposit, Maryland

  April 24, 2020, 8:21 p.m.

  “Up there. At the streetlight.” Daniel nods toward what appears to be a small trucking company just ahead on Tome Memorial Highway. “Slow down! You’re going to miss it.”

  Aaron cuts his headlights and whips the wheel to the left a little harder than necessary to make the turn, probably just to irk Daniel. Gravel crunches under the tires as we enter the lot and drive past one sign that reads Portal Development and another that reads Private Property No Trespassing. A small white trailer sits at the far end of the lot, near the tree line. It’s dark, and aside from a couple of vehicles that look like they haven’t moved in months, the place appears empty.

  Of course, this is just the back entrance. And not even an actual entrance but a facade that kept people from wondering who was poking around the supposedly abandoned naval center. Daniel said he’d covered a couple of guard shifts in that trailer. It was a cushy assignment, aside from the boredom. If the phone rang or someone stopped by, both of which rarely happened, all they had to do was claim the company’s calendar was booked and point them to another local construction firm.

  “Turn the parking lights back on once we round the bend,” Daniel says. “And keep to the right. There’s a wicked”—the left wheel drops suddenly, tilting us slightly to the side—“pothole.”

  There are actually quite a few wicked potholes. The truck would have taken these bumps in stride, but we didn’t want to waste any more time unhitching it from the RV. So we’re back in Sam’s Kia, an olive-green SUV that looks like it’s seen better days. Deo and Taylor are in the third-row seat, so I think they’re probably getting the worst of it.

  “The gate’s just ahead,” Daniel says. “My passcode should still work. I doubt anyone bothered to change it since they evacuated.”

  We stop in front of the security gate. Daniel gets out, hobbling a bit, and punches in the code, twice. Nothing happens. He pokes around for a minute and then finally comes back to the truck. Getting into the cab seems to be even harder for him than getting out was. It’s clear Aaron isn’t going to do anything to help, so I start to open my door, thinking I can give him a boost or at least steady him.

  “I’ve got it, Anna! Get back in the damn car.”

  Nope. Hasn’t mellowed at all.

  “There’s no power to the gate,” he says once he’s back in his seat. “Battery backup is dead too, so I don’t think it’s a temporary outage.”

  “Wouldn’t be much reason to restore power up here after the fire,” Aaron says. “I mean, no one lives up here. Or works here. Could be good news, actually. I was worried we might end up tripping some kind of silent alarm that notifies the local police. But if the power is out, that may mean the whole security system is down.”

  I hear two almost identical sighs. One from Deo, in the seat behind me. The other from Daniel, in front of me. Neither of them actually says anything, but I’m pretty sure they’re both thinking the same thing that I am, and it’s something that might not necessarily occur to Taylor and Aaron. They’ve never actually been inside The Warren, only above it. The only way the power being out is a plus is if we discover they’re not already here and we actually manage to grab my dad before they get him underground. The Warren was hellish enough with the lights on.

  “So what do we do now?” I ask.

  Daniel grins and nods toward the gate. “I say we just back the car up and ram right through it. Unless you’re too chicken?”

  Aaron stares at the gate for a second. He cocks his head to the side in a way that almost looks like Ein when he’s trying to puzzle something out. After a moment, Aaron’s eyebrows go up and he grins back at his brother. “Challenge accepted.”

  “Please tell me you’re joking,” Deo says. “You’re not really going to crash through that gate, are you?”

  Aaron doesn’t respond. He just pops the thing into reverse and begins backing down the road.

  “Seriously?” Taylor says. “Sam just paid this thing off. He’s going to flay you alive if you mess it up.”

  “They’re right,” I say. “That gate is iron. This is a truly bad idea.”

  “Why have a bull bar on the front bumper if you’re not going to use it?” Daniel counters. “Yee-haw!”

  “That’s a lousy Duck Dynasty impression,” Taylor says.

  “I was actually going for Dukes of Hazzard, but . . .” Daniel grins even wider as Aaron accelerates. I brace for impact, but I’m actually thinking he needs to go faster if we’re really going to do this. I’m not sure we’ll hit the gate hard enough to take it out at this speed.

  When the front of the Kia connects with the metal bar, however, there’s a faint clang and that’s it. The gate swings back, and we sail through without the slightest resistance. If I hadn’t been watching, I probably wouldn’t even have known the bar was there.

  Aaron and Daniel aren’t just grinning now. They’re laughing.

  “You can all let go of the oh-shit handles now,” Daniel says.

  “I’m sorry,” Aaron says, flashing me a contrite look over his shoulder. “It’s just . . . if the power is out and there’s no battery backup, open is usually the default setting on most security gates.”

  “Usually the default?” Taylor says. “On most gates?”

  “Plus . . . I have a better view from up here and—”

  “And he could see I pushed the gate open a tiny bit,” Daniel says. “But it was tough to shove it all the way out, so . . .”

  “Should have seen your eyes, Tay,” Aaron adds, making a circle with his fingers and thumb. “Like someone out of that Sailor Moon cartoon you used to watch.”

  Taylor flips him off, but she and Deo are chuckling. Even though I don’t join in, it’s a close call. Not because I think it was particularly funny, but because Aaron is laughing. Deo, too. When was the last time I heard them really laugh? I can’t even remember.

  Of course, the fact that I can’t remember means nothing. They could have been laughing constantly the past few months, yukking it up on a daily basis, and Cregg just took all of the fun slots in the daily schedule.

  We continue down what’s left of the road. It was paved at one point, but large chunks seem to have eroded, and there’s no moon to speak of, so it’s hard to avoid the hazards. Daniel acts as tour guide as we drive, pointing out where to turn but also what used to exist here based on the pictures and maps he’s seen. The area was originally a private boys’ academy, but the school and surrounding acreage were purchased by the US government to serve as a training center during World War II. Nearly two hundred and fifty thousand recruits—both military and civilian—were processed at Bainbridge Naval Training Center. Offices, dormitories, and even small homes were located here at one point, along with a commissary, dining halls, and a movie theater. Now they’re just concrete slabs.

  The facility continued to be used by the government for a variety of purposes until the mid-1980s when it was finally abandoned. Some claimed the place was contaminated by chemical-weapons testing. Those rumors seemed to be confirmed when it was designated a superfund site and scheduled for a complete environmental overhaul.

  Most of the oldest buildings, the ones that were part of the Tome School for Boys, are little
more than burned-out husks now, thanks to two separate fires. Local residents tend to steer clear of the place, with the exception of teens looking for a thrill or somewhere to hide out for some underage drinking and other recreational pursuits. The authorities blamed teenage mischief for the first fire, but it was really a Delphi experiment that got out of control. We’re still not certain whether the second, much more extensive, blaze spread from the fire I helped set inside Lab 1 or whether Cregg’s people set it to cover their escape. Or whether it was the group with Graham Cregg or the one with his father, since the camps seem to have split by the time of the fire. The blame for it was conveniently placed on the so-called WOCAN terrorist group purportedly using the facility as a sex-trafficking ring to raise money for their separatist agenda.

  The place was given a clean bill of environmental health a few decades back, but it remains undeveloped, possibly because of the other rumors. Area residents who worked at the Bainbridge Center before it closed down said they sometimes heard noises belowground. That spurred rumors the place was haunted.

  I don’t know if they were right about that back in the 1980s. It’s possible the noises were just from the underground tunnels that led to the secret lab a bit farther uphill, run by CIA contractors. But it’s definitely haunted now. When I picked up Jaden’s spirit in the lab, I sensed many others in that room. Four of them, Jaden’s friend Will and three women I call the Furies, took up temporary residence in my head. They opted to stay when Deo and I ran from the lab, disgusted I wasn’t able to shoot Graham Cregg as he lay on the floor, writhing in pain.

  Dozens of others were killed in those rooms. A few were second-generation Delphi adepts like me. But most of them were young adults, many brought in illegally from Eastern Europe and elsewhere. If they couldn’t be controlled, couldn’t be shaped into some form that furthered the younger Cregg’s agenda, those adepts didn’t leave the labs alive.

  Aaron parks in a small clutch of trees about fifty yards from the dormitory.

  “We should be over the cafeteria about now,” Daniel says. I nod absently, thinking he’s talking about some World War II–era building, but then he adds, “The old dorm we just passed sits right on top of the testing rooms. Ashley once told me there was an old stairway going from that building down into an office near the testing center, a relic from the 1960s where there were still workers who came topside for lunch or a smoke break. But they boarded it off, along with a few other entrances, when they started using this place for the Delphi experiments.”

  “I think . . . I think I’ve been in this section before,” Aaron says. “When Taylor and I were—”

  “Yes,” Taylor says. “Back when we were trying to find Deo. This is the building I sketched. I recognize it from those things up on the roof.”

  “Those castle-looking barrier . . . things?” Daniel says.

  “They’re called crenellations.”

  “Yeah,” Daniel says, rolling his eyes at my comment. “Tell Emily thanks for the assist.”

  The last bit annoys me. He’s right that I learned the word originally because of Emily and her crossword fixation. But it’s stored in my memory now. It’s not like I had to go digging through the file cabinets to find it. Daniel makes it sound like my head is empty without the memories of my hitchers. Like I’m just an empty vessel.

  Aaron glances back at me in the rearview mirror. I don’t know if he understands why Daniel’s comment made me angry, but he seems kind of glad it did.

  “Anyway,” Daniel says, “during my first month undercover at Delphi, I was on grounds duty. We used that building—the one with the crenellations—for surveillance. From that rooftop, you can see clear down to the riverfront and the back entrance. Some of us will still need to cover the side entrance, though.”

  “There’s also a decent chance they’re already here,” Aaron says. “So we split up. Who goes where?”

  “You and I should head down toward the side entrance,” Daniel says. “It’s closer to the main road, and if I had to bet, I’d say that’s the way they’ll come in. We can also check the garage area while we’re over there and see if there’s any sign they’ve already come in. Deo’s with us, since we’ll probably need his amp power. Taylor and Anna stay here as lookout. And I do mean lookout. If you see anything at all, do not investigate. Just call us.”

  “No. Not on the roof,” Deo says. “Anna said she was dizzy earlier.”

  I have a sudden flashback to the first part of that odd dream I’ve been having about the woman sprawled on the patio. The memory of the dream chills me, and even though I still think it’s most likely symbolic, I’m relieved to know it couldn’t have happened here. The house in my dream is newer, the lawn carefully manicured, not wild and overgrown like the grass in the courtyard. A smaller patio, stone, not brick.

  “They don’t have to go up on the roof,” Daniel says. “We usually did lookout duty on the top floor. You can see almost as much from there anyway, and it’s sheltered. Most of the windows are intact and the stairway is solid. Here.”

  He tosses something to his sister as she exits the car. A key ring.

  “What’s this for?” she asks.

  “The lock they installed when Delphi set the place up as a guard station. Only one door . . . they bricked off the other entrances. We’d still get kids poking around up here occasionally looking for a place to get wasted. The locked door usually meant they’d head to another building . . . there are plenty to choose from. There’s also a dead bolt on the inside. Use it once you get in, okay?”

  “The door wasn’t locked when Taylor and I were here before,” Aaron says. “But it did seem to be one of the only buildings that had been maintained. No debris, just a lot of dust.”

  Aaron turns to face me. “Are you sure about this? You haven’t slept since Wednesday night. Are you really alert enough to keep watch?”

  “I’ve been chugging coffee nonstop since noon. I’m more wired than tired right now, but if I sit in this car by myself doing nothing, I’ll fall asleep regardless of how much caffeine I’ve had. I need to keep moving.”

  He sighs.

  So do Daniel and Deo.

  “Taylor?” Daniel says. “What do you think?”

  There’s a long pause and then she looks at me. “You were feeling dizzy. How dizzy?”

  “Just occasional light-headedness. It passes and I’m fine.”

  “Any other weird symptoms?”

  “Well, I’ve got a psychopath inside my head.”

  She rolls her eyes. “New symptoms, I mean.”

  “No new symptoms.”

  “And,” she continues, “is it easier or harder to keep said psychopath behind your walls today than it was this time yesterday?”

  I’m wondering exactly where this game of twenty questions is leading . . . and why everyone seems to know except me.

  “I’m tired, but . . . keeping my walls up definitely seems easier. His thoughts aren’t intruding like they were before. And from what I’ve gathered over the past day, I’ve been in control a lot less often than I believed since Cregg came on board.”

  Taylor nods, then reaches into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out a small plastic bag. Inside is a syringe, a vial, and a prescription bottle. She unzips the bag and tosses me the bottle.

  I’m about to ask her why she brought my sleeping meds. That’s the only prescription I have, and I doubt I’d need anything to knock me out right now. But then I realize the top is a different color.

  “It’s still a few hours before you’re supposed to take another one,” she says. “I didn’t give you anywhere near the maximum dose. I wanted to see how it would affect you first.”

  “What is this?”

  “The oral form of the shot Kelsey gave you,” Taylor says. “An antipsychotic that’s often prescribed for dissociative disorders. I put one in that energy smoothie you drank last night. You were supposed to be on it until it was time for a second injection. After that, you drop the pills
. That’s the protocol Kelsey started, then she changed her mind. Or rather, Cregg changed her mind.”

  Those words trigger a reaction from the rat-spider. Legs scraping against the walls and a steady thump-thump-thump for a few seconds. But then it gradually fades.

  “If Kelsey changed her mind, how did you get this?”

  “The same meds are also used for depression and post-traumatic stress. But Jasper quit taking it. Says it made him dizzy. From what I read online, that side effect usually doesn’t last, but . . .” Taylor shrugs and I nod. It’s Jasper. Patience doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.

  “So . . . you swiped his meds and gave them to me without telling me?”

  “Miranda swiped them during one of their visits with Jasper,” Taylor says.

  Jasper Hawkins is still living at the little fishing cabin where we first met Miranda and TJ. Over the past few months, Kelsey has gradually approved longer visits between Jasper and his family. He may not be taking his medication, but he is meeting regularly with Kelsey for anger management therapy, and to the best of our knowledge, there have been no more bruises or other indications of abuse. They began spending occasional nights and weekends together as a family at the cabin. Even if Magda and Kelsey were willing to risk him staying at Sandalford, which they’re not, I doubt Jasper would agree. He still doesn’t like to be around me, and that probably goes double if he realized I picked up Cregg as a hitcher.

  “Although,” Deo adds, “it was with his permission, so I’m not sure swiped is the right word. And anyway, it was a group decision. Taylor started you on a very low dose last week after we realized Kelsey might be . . . compromised. We’ve been sneaking it into your food and coffee, and we all watched for any reaction.”

  Aaron nods. “After the deal with the steering wheel last night, we agreed Taylor should increase the dosage. And eventually give you a second injection. You should have been on the oral version this entire time for full impact.”

  I’m pretty sure I would have taken the medicine voluntarily last night after the steering wheel incident. But probably not a week ago. And I get why they couldn’t risk letting me know. Cregg would have pulled out all the stops trying to get control if he’d had any idea what they were planning.