The Delphi Revolution (The Delphi Trilogy Book 3)

by Rysa Walker

  Sophie looked up when her name was spoken, so it’s obvious that she’s paying almost no attention to her video. At this point, I’m tempted to tell her to go, but since that would probably worry Aaron, I opt to ignore her.

  I also ignore the sick thud in my stomach when Pfeifer mentions the amp serum. It’s not like he’s telling me anything new. I’ve known for months now that his research was the genesis of the Delphi program. This man—one half of my gene pool—created the drug that nearly killed Deo. That did kill quite a few others.

  “So, while I don’t know for certain,” Pfeifer continues, “my best guess is Cregg found out what I was doing. That I’d been stringing him along and using Delphi resources for something unrelated to his primary goal. We were already having disagreements over human testing. The blocker and amp formulas weren’t stable—and the fact that there are still so few adepts with those abilities suggests to me that this hasn’t changed. The only reason I was able to hide what I was doing for as long as I did is because there’s a small area of overlap between the suppression formula Cregg wanted and the treatment I was working on.”

  A slightly dazed curtain falls over his face. “Cregg didn’t have time to plan it, since he couldn’t have known your mother was coming. I didn’t even know. I thought the two of you were still in Colorado. Cregg simply stumbled upon a way to punish me that not only removed the possibility of me going public with the deaths caused by the Delphi Project but also guaranteed anything I said would be discredited as the ramblings of a madman. A guy who couldn’t accept he’d shot his ex-wife in a fit of anger. He could sell that story, and he knew it.”

  “Why did you divorce?” The question isn’t germane to the current discussion, but I want to know.

  There’s a very long pause before they answer. I suspect there’s an internal debate going on about what to tell me, because my father’s expression looks like the video Deo once made of me conferring with one of my hitchers—eyes vacant, mouth slightly open.

  “It was . . . complicated. I think that’s how people put it these days, although judging from your expression right now, maybe that term is already cliché. Our reasons were personal, and we’ve had fifteen years together since then to work those out. You’d be amazed how many misunderstandings disappear when you share a mind.”

  I’m one of the few people who wouldn’t be amazed in the slightest. I understand Daniel—and vice versa—a hell of a lot better than I used to, and he was only in my head for a few months. But I want to hear the rest of what they’re saying, so I don’t comment.

  “The most important reason, however, was to protect you. We started making plans even before you were born. You were a . . . surprise. Not an unwelcome one,” they add hurriedly. “Definitely not.”

  I can tell this isn’t true. I don’t blame them. There is no way I would voluntarily bring a child into the mix under their circumstances at the time, even though, from a purely selfish standpoint, I’m glad for the mistake.

  Pfeifer goes on to say that several former Delphi subjects had popped up at the Python offices reporting that their kids were manifesting signs of psychic abilities. Most of the parents were well past the point where reproduction violated the terms of their contract, and some threatened to sue Decathlon. The legal team pulled out their contracts, in which they’d basically signed away all rights, in perpetuity, for themselves, their heirs, and so forth. And then they pulled out a corporate checkbook, along with a nondisclosure agreement. The cash payout was a pittance that would never cover the extra expenses most of them incurred trying to care for their children. Pfeifer seems confident that at least some of those kids eventually wound up at The Warren, because the official complaint put them on Cregg’s radar.

  All through this discussion of Cregg and Decathlon, Pfeifer’s tone is harsh and damning. I want to ask him about his own role in all this. It was his research, after all. He worked on the project for nearly a decade. Even if he spent the last few years working against them in some fashion, surely he must shoulder a considerable portion of the blame?

  That doesn’t seem like a wise topic of conversation this early in our relationship. But I know those questions will gnaw at me. I’ll have to ask him eventually.

  “Cole Quinn was smart about it,” Pfeifer says. “Although I suspect that’s because he did violate the terms of his contract with Decathlon. It was only three months after his contract expired when he showed up one Thursday night at a bar where he knew a group of us from the lab usually went for a drink after work. He pulled me aside and asked how my side project was coming along. I didn’t even realize he knew what I was working on, but he and Beth Wilcox dealt with a lot of the paperwork. Equipment orders, lab materials, and so forth. If anyone could tell I was doing something outside my mandate, it would have been them. Anyway, Quinn asked if I’d had any luck, and I could tell from his expression that it was . . . personal for him. I ended up agreeing to take a look at his boy, even though I still didn’t have anything to offer in the way of treatment.”

  “Aaron?”

  “Yes. The kid was barely talking yet on his own, just typical toddler phrases. But he knew when someone was angry. What they were angry about, what they were thinking. He’d repeat exact words, many of them words that weren’t in his vocabulary. We even did a reading with portable EEG equipment, older than the stuff in the main lab, but good enough for me to spot the signature changes in brain activity. We got a very vivid spike in the readings when the boy picked up something from one of the other hotel rooms. Right in the middle of the test, this toddler yells, ‘You bastards!’ at the top of his lungs.”

  I can’t help but smile as I picture a toddler-sized Aaron in one of those EEG caps. Pfeifer doesn’t need to describe it. I wore them many times back when doctors were trying to figure out what made little Anna go crazy. The worst parts were the adhesive strips that held the wires in place and that cold gel that increased conductivity but left my hair all gross and sticky.

  My smile fades, however, as I think about how incredibly challenging it must have been for Michele and Cole Quinn to handle Aaron as a small child, especially when the Delphi serum left Cole with a temper that he struggled to keep under control. And how hard it must have been on Aaron, knowing every stray angry impulse that passed through the mind of his parents, his siblings, his teachers—even if they’d never act on those impulses. It’s a miracle that Aaron is sane.

  Pfeifer says Cole showed up about the time they learned Leah was pregnant with me. She had been part of the last test group at Fort Bragg and opted not to sign up with the civilian version of the program, partly because they were dating by then and it would have raised eyebrows. They had a long-distance relationship until her three years were up, then they married and she joined him in Maryland.

  “Only a few people at work even knew. Our relationship started when we were coworkers, and . . . it seemed wise to keep our private lives private. Leah’s ability wasn’t exactly top priority for the military, anyway, although I suspect that Senator Cregg wouldn’t mind having someone like her on the campaign trail.”

  “What exactly does she . . . do?”

  Sophie is listening again. She’s gradually pivoted back toward us as we talked, and I can almost see her ears perk up when I ask the question. While I totally get that it might be hard to ignore our conversation, it’s beginning to feel very intrusive. I shoot her an annoyed look, but she doesn’t turn away this time.

  Pfeifer notices the silent exchange between me and Sophie. “She’s been cooped up all day. All day yesterday, too, from what she told me earlier. Let her get up, stretch—”

  “Don’t bother,” Sophie says, holding up the tablet so that I can see her ratcheting up the volume. “It will probably destroy my hearing, but whatever.” Then she reaches down and tugs the quilt over her head. “Happy now?”

  “We’ll wrap up soon,” I say. “It’s late, and we aren’t going to catch up on fifteen years in one sitting.”

&nbs
p; “That’s true,” Pfeifer says. “But to answer your question, your mother sees . . . auras, I guess?”

  A laugh, and then Pfeifer’s face shifts. “Always the scientist. After all this time, it still makes him crazy to talk about things he can’t quantify. How do you apply the scientific method to a ring of color that shifts with a person’s mood? Something a researcher can’t even see? Scott has always been much more comfortable with the firestarters and telekinetic crowd, where it’s easier to define variables and to measure output.”

  “But . . . he picks up ghosts. Which you can’t measure and no one else can see.”

  “Yes! That’s exactly what I told him. You’d think that would have made him less of an empiricist, but . . .” She shakes her head, smiling. “Anyway, he’s right. I see auras.”

  “That’s what you meant earlier. When you said that my colors changed. Do they look the same as they did when I was small?”

  The smile fades a bit. “Mostly.”

  I start to press her on that, but then it occurs to me why she’s being evasive. “You see Cregg, too, don’t you?”

  “Not completely. Your colors still predominate, but . . . your edges are murky and gray-green. And everything else is a little dim.”

  “Do the colors signify anything?”

  “That’s the part that’s hard to quantify, because everyone seems to see them a little differently. What’s more interesting to me than the actual color is when I notice changes. I see those when someone is happy. Or upset. Or lying. If I . . . this part is hard to explain, but if I peer closely into the aura, I can usually pick up stray thoughts and emotions. And sometimes, I can tweak those emotions to clear up the colors—to get the person into a more pleasant mood. A more cooperative mood. That last element probably would have made me a subject of interest to Python, even after I left the program. Someone they’d have been inclined to keep a closer eye on and maybe . . . employ. But Scott played down that side of my ability when writing up his report, because I’d made it very clear that I had serious moral reservations about using it.”

  “So a milder version of Daniel Quinn’s ability. Like when he told Cregg’s daughter to go into the containment unit at the lab last night?”

  “We don’t remember that.” Pfeifer looks down, clearly uncomfortable. “We . . . weren’t exactly in control last night. But yes, it sounds similar. It’s also somewhat similar to Graham Cregg’s ability. That’s the side of it that bothered me, and it eventually bothered Scott, too, once we talked through the moral implications of his research. I’ve used the ability when I had to. A few times when you were small, I used it to convince a ghost you picked up that it was time to go. And I tried it on Cregg that night at Python labs, but . . . it backfired.”

  “How?”

  The silence stretches out so long that I’m not sure she’s going to answer. But then she shakes her head and says, “Memories can be slippery, Anna, especially the ones that are tied up with our emotions. And that’s even more true of old memories. Ones that have lived in our minds for a long time, so long that they’re more like a memory of a memory. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah. That’s how it is with the memories from my hitchers. My . . . ghosts.”

  “Hitchers,” Pfeifer says, trying out the word. “I like that. Anyway, I latched on to a memory of Cregg’s that wasn’t quite what I thought. It was the brightest, most vivid memory in that wretched man’s head, but then it . . . twisted in my grasp. Have you ever watched Snow White?”

  It’s actually one of the few Disney movies that I haven’t seen, or at least not all of it. Deo and I tried a couple of years ago when one of the other foster kids put it on. It was too saccharine, though, and the warbly singing made my skin crawl. But one of my hitchers watched it, and I have one of those vague memories of a memory, so I nod for her to continue.

  “The apple that the witch gave Snow White was shiny, bright, and perfect on the outside, hiding the poison within. And that’s what this memory of his mother was—”

  The rage in the back of my head isn’t as strong or as protracted as it was back at the townhouse, when I saw the spider’s eyes in my reflection. But this brief flare is still more than anything I’ve heard from Cregg since we arrived here at the cabin. He doesn’t want to hear what my mother is saying. This is a memory he doesn’t want to share. That he doesn’t want to relive. My walls are solid, but they don’t entirely block his furious desire to shut her up.

  Several things happen at once. The bedroom door swings open, smashing into the wall and sending one of the pictures hanging nearby crashing to the floor. Aaron rushes through the doorway, his face flushed the way it always is when he gets a vibe. Daniel is right behind him, yelling for Sophie to grab Pfeifer.

  All of this is background, however. My eyes are fixed on Pfeifer’s face. Seeing his expression switch between his personality and my mother’s was odd, but this is terrifying. It’s almost like his face is a video being played on fast-forward, or maybe one of those flip-books shifting between images at an abnormally rapid pace. He’s saying something, but it’s not in English. I don’t think it’s in any single language, but more of a multilingual word salad tossed together by the spirits hovering just below his surface.

  And then, for a split second, my father turns into a giant spider-rat. He’s no longer sitting on a bed. It’s a stack of bodies, dozens of bodies. Some are strangers, but most are all too familiar. Deo. Aaron. Kelsey.

  By the time the scream reaches my lips, the creature is gone. It’s just Pfeifer, on the bed, staring at me. The only clear signal that reaches my brain is a written sign from Will.

  KEEP THE SPIDER IN ITS CAGE!

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mathias, West Virginia

  April 25, 2020, 10:13 p.m.

  Aaron takes hold of my arm and spins me around to face him. I know this look. He’s trying to read my eyes, to be certain that Cregg hasn’t taken over. And that tells me he didn’t just pick up a vibe from Pfeifer’s crew. He picked up one from my hitcher, too.

  I want to hold Aaron’s gaze, to reassure him. But right now, I don’t want to turn my back on Pfeifer. The flip-book show on Pfeifer’s face has ended, landing on my mother’s expression. She looks shaken, but I can tell she’s regained control.

  “I’m sorry! Cregg’s colors surged. It was only for a second, but I was worried your walls wouldn’t hold. And as soon as that thought entered my mind, it set off a chain reaction with the others.”

  “A nuclear chain reaction,” Aaron says, lowering the gun that I’ve just realized he was pointing toward my parents. That can’t have made Leah’s job of reining them in any easier. I shudder, remembering the shifting tide of raw emotion that washed over Pfeifer’s face a moment ago. It was like the girl from The Exorcist. Was that how I looked to Deo when the Furies were fighting for control of me that night in Lab 1?

  I’m not sure I want to know.

  “You should go,” Pfeifer says. “Sophie and I have things under control, but they’re still really close to the surface.”

  Aaron backs us out the door and into the hallway. Daniel and Deo are already in the living room.

  “What the hell was that?” Aaron asks.

  “You saw it, too? The spider?”

  “No. It was like the whole room was a mob scene. Hundreds of people, and then they vanished.”

  “Yeah, well, I saw Patrick, my stepdad,” Deo says. “I’m guessing Daniel saw his wall of water again. What about you, Tay?”

  “I didn’t see anything.” Her grim smile tells me she’s lying. “But we need to get out of here for a while, so bundle up, kiddies.”

  None of us are thrilled at the prospect of tramping out to the far side of the property. But it seems unavoidable, so we pull on our shoes and jackets.

  Once we’re outside, Taylor tosses the keys to Sam’s SUV to Aaron. “When we’re finished talking, you two should clear out. Drive into Moorefield. Go to a movie or something.”

 
“It’s after ten,” Aaron says.

  “Then go to Walmart. Buy some food. Or you could actually follow through on what we talked about yesterday if you’re feeling adventurous. Just get Anna out of here and let things calm down.”

  “She’s right,” Daniel says. “But maybe Deo and I should take her, since I seem to make them nervous, too. If anything happens, they might be less upset if Aaron was the one with the weapon.”

  “Could we stop thinking about shooting my father as a viable option, please?”

  “I didn’t mean against him,” Daniel says. “I don’t think anyone tracked us here by conventional means, but we’re dealing with other psychics. Someone should definitely be armed if the Senator’s people decide to pay us a visit. I’m not sure it will matter if there are more than a few of them, but . . .” He stops and rubs a hand through his hair. “I just totally invalidated my argument, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did,” Aaron says. “The only thing I offer is an early warning system. You, and especially you combined with Deo, offer a defense. Plus, if you need actual firepower, Taylor has her gun. She’s a better shot than you are, anyway.”

  “Then she must be twice as good as you.”

  I ignore their posturing and focus on Taylor. “You knew what was going to happen with my father, didn’t you?”

  She waves her hand dismissively. “I knew something was going to happen. From Stan’s texts. He told me about the fire upstairs and that Aaron would . . .” She stops, pressing her lips together, but she’s already said enough to pique Aaron’s curiosity.