by Rob Horner
She had to fight this, the darkness. So long as there was light, Travis lived. Once it was gone, everything would end, for Sherry as well as Travis.
No! She wasn’t going to let that happen.
The noise of Travis’s heart increased as Sherry entered the right atrium.
The walls were alive with vibrations. Light emanated from a point somewhere below her, spreading quickly to surround the entire organ, causing systolic contraction and diastolic expansion. The bottom dropped out, and she fell into the ventricle.
So, this is his heart, Sherry thought, sensing its weakness, knowing her first task was to discover the cause of the weakness before she could repair it.
What had she worried about before? Infection? Internal bleeding?
She sought a vision of her own heart, wondering if that was even possible while so immersed in Travis’s body.
Her vision doubled, then cleared, and Sherry found herself in a similar chamber, pulsing in a slower rhythm. Here the river was a flood, so thick and deep that only determination could keep her in place.
That was the problem.
Travis was dying from blood loss as the precious liquid leaked out of him through arteries, arterioles, and veins torn by the agent’s bullet. The shirt might be a stopper to an outside flow, but it couldn’t prevent blood from pouring into the nothingness within his own body. If she could stop the flow of blood, he might survive. It was all she could hope for, since she didn’t think it possible to replace his blood supply. His unconsciousness was a reaction to the loss of blood, as his body shut down unnecessary functions to conserve what energy it could. That his heart still beat at all told her he had enough blood to survive, if he didn’t lose too much more.
Unaware that her physical body breathed a sigh of relief, Sherry let the vision of her heart fade, finding herself back in the shallower river that was Travis’s blood stream.
A faint…something…tugged at her peripheral vision, a small anomaly that didn’t seem to belong. Sherry let the vision fade; she didn’t have time to ponder other problems. She could return to his heart later, once she’d taken care of the immediate problem.
Unsure if her theory would even work, but having no other alternatives, Sherry ordered her power to take her to the site of the blood loss.
The doubling of her vision happened again, like an example of bad editing in a B-movie as one scene overlapped another. The heart faded from view.
Now she floated in mid-air, surrounded by shattered walls of white and gray, pink and scarlet. There was real light here, but it didn’t come from within.
She had the strangely disconcerting notion that, if she turned her head and looked hard enough, she would see both the entrance and exit wounds carved by the bullet, against which would be pressed the fine mesh of Travis’s shirt, with the sunlight outside shining through.
Her stomach gave a sickening turn at the thought.
Seeing into a wound from outside didn’t bother her; she’d watched enough medical movies to be unfazed by the glistening folds of organs revealed during surgical procedures both real and fictional.
But to be able to see outside from within a body…that was the stuff of nightmares.
A new sound reached her, much louder than the throb of his heart.
It was a roaring-rushing-pouring as of water racing through dark air and into an abyss.
Like a waterfall.
Once that thought hit her, Sherry was able to see the source. Just below her was the pulsing, glistening red curve of Travis’s arteries. And there was one, a large one, running from Travis’s neck and over his collar bone, past the shoulder, and down into the arm. The subclavian artery.
It wasn’t torn or shredded but it leaked like a water hose nicked by a lawn mower, allowing its precious cargo to pour unimpeded into Travis’s chest cavity.
Oh, sweet Jesus, she thought. How am I going to stop that? How am I going to save him?
There wasn’t anything she could do. She had no power over his physical processes. Nothing they had learned about their strange abilities affected things in a physical or tangible manner.
They couldn’t manipulate matter. They couldn’t bend spoons with their minds or levitate pens—none of those telekinetic parlor tricks.
Travis’s life would continue to drain away until his heart stopped. His brain would follow soon after and Sherry would be alone. There would be no hope of resuscitating him, not when there wasn’t enough blood for his heart to operate. And there was no time to get him to an emergency room.
Feeling her own impotence crashing in on her, Sherry let loose a sob of anguish.
Travis was going to die.
A brief pulse of reddish light flowed past, perhaps nothing more than a nerve impulse relaying information about pain to Travis’s uncaring brain. But it served to jostle Sherry out of her hopelessness.
They couldn’t affect material things, no. But electricity seemed to be at their command.
Could this be used in the same way?
And if so, how could she make use of it?
She understood intuitively that she couldn’t surge power through his body, at least not the way she’d done before. She didn’t want to cause more damage.
A surge would also drain him, just as had happened when she sent power arcing through the Mustang.
Whatever she did had to be controlled. The power would have to come solely from her.
And it had to be done fast.
“I want you to heal,” Sherry said, unaware that she spoke aloud. Her vocalization helped focus her concentration, so that some part of her brain, or her heart, or wherever her power came from understood her intentions. She had to make the power work the way she wanted it to, even if she didn’t understand what she wanted.
Pushing, pressing, she told the lines of power in Travis’s body to focus on this one thing, to heal this one place. Close the tear in the artery.
She prayed.
She ordered.
She cajoled.
A faint tingling raced through her, a feeling of being drained. Her power was doing something, though she couldn’t see what that something might be.
“Please, close the hole. Fix yourself. Use my power, my energy. Don’t die. You’ve got to heal.”
It began as nothing more than sudden pulses of energy coursing along the wall of the artery, reaching the severed end and holding, gathering, building. The jagged edges of the blood vessel glowed with blue and red shards of light.
Sherry watched, awed, as the light continued to build, stretching, trying to bridge the gap. Afraid to give any more power lest she destroy the fragile light-construct yet even more fearful of running out of time, Sherry did everything she could to aid in the healing process, selflessly giving of her own energy in the hope of bolstering Travis’s. Platelets aggregated along the weave of light, bringing fibrinogen to plug the wound. New tissue began to form, smoothing out the crude plug.
The entire process should have taken weeks. But with Sherry’s power, the arterial leak was closed in seconds.
The world within Sherry’s senses filled with light as she pushed more of her power into Travis. Her view changed as her mind spun. The energy hadn’t been concentrated only on the torn vessel, but had coursed along the shattered bone, the shredded tendons, ligaments, and muscles, the punctured skin. Hemopoiesis, the formation of new blood from the marrow of the long bones, went into overdrive, flooding his bloodstream with reticulocytes, immature blood cells to replace those lost.
Despite the cascade of brilliance around her, Sherry could tell the impression of outside light was fading. His skin closed as the last of the repairs were made.
She’d entered his body through their shared awareness with the intention of stabilizing him, yanking him back to this side of death’s threshold. Without understanding the ways of the human healing process she’d boosted it, giving of herself to enhance his body’s own regenerative properties. With a surplus of energy and a fair bit of work
to do, Travis’s body attacked every injury simultaneously, repairing damage Sherry hadn’t noticed, going above and beyond the call of duty.
This rapid response also attacked a certain anomaly in the outer wall of Travis’s heart which, under normal circumstances, would have gone unnoticed by his immune system. It was a tiny thing—a small, microscopic device which, when activated, would release a single drop of concentrated sulfuric acid. The acid would quickly burn through, and cauterize, the wall of Travis’s heart. The hole would irritate the sensitive heart muscle, causing a fatal dysrhythmia which would lead to cardiac arrest. Even if Travis lived long enough for someone to apply a defibrillator, the electric shock would only widen the hole, ensuring his death.
Pried free, the device was examined and summarily dismissed by the lymphatic system and flushed into the digestive tract, where it would be dealt with as just another piece of biological waste.
Sherry knew none of this, however. All she saw were the amazing lights surrounding her, draining more and more of her energy. She gave all that she could, now consciously pushing the healing process faster and faster, hearing and feeling the beat of Travis’s heart becoming stronger and steadier.
Finally, Sherry’s reserves gave out.
Depleted, she collapsed across the unconscious man.
Travis’s body would continue to heal, finishing the job Sherry had begun.
Chapter 24
Meanwhile
1
“He’s coming in!” Billy shouted, returning from the living room; he’d stepped away moments before to answer the phone.
“Who is?” Debbie asked softly, not wanting to disturb Victoria or Brian. The two had adjourned to the guest bedroom, where Brian was quizzing Vicki about Travis, from the things he’d said to the kind of car he drove. If she concentrated, she could hear their voices through the wall, now talking about their pasts.
Debbie concealed a smile. The man was so trapped in his past pain that he was blind to the attraction between him and Vicki. But Vicki saw it, that much was obvious. Sighing, Debbie wished them the best.
“The lead agent for the C.I.A.,” Billy said proudly, answering Debbie’s question.
“You don’t mean Special Agent Buck Travers, do you?” Debbie asked, emphasizing the first word of the title in a way that said she thought him anything but special.
“Indeed, I do.”
“Now why would he come back to Illinois?” Debbie asked softly.
“Come on, babe. You already know the answer to that one.”
“Well, it’s not because of Victoria,” Debbie said, thinking out loud.
“Right.”
“I mean, he’s never bothered to make a personal appearance when we rescued others.”
“Nope.” Billy resisted the urge to smile. He loved listening to his wife’s mind at work. And she usually obliged him, thinking aloud for his benefit and hers.
Debbie hated the arrogant government agent. He’d been involved with the project almost since its inception. In the beginning, his job entailed training and supervising the security force. He’d done the same in Afghanistan. The idea was simple: train the locals to do their jobs so they didn’t need you anymore.
Translated to the project, that meant setting up a security team capable of tracking every authorized person in the facility and on the project and preventing media leaks. What Debbie hadn’t known was the ulterior motive of the project, and why it made so much sense for the C.I.A. to be involved. That’s where Agent Travers true responsibilities lay. The security team had two purposes, keep out unauthorized personnel and prevent any “volunteers” from escaping.
The cyber-net surrounding the project didn’t just control information, it also projected false narratives to the subjects’ families. Many of the early failures, young lives lost tragically, were compounded by the sadistic agent, who dealt with questioning family members with ruthless efficiency. It was only later that the project began providing the same memory reprogramming to family members that it did to the successful subjects.
The dossier on Travers proclaimed him intelligent, arrogant, and suspicious. Any one of these qualities would be dangerous in a man such as him. The combination made danger assured. Though Buck Travers tread lightly when being examined by his superiors, his extreme intelligence made it child’s play for him to commit—and hide—as many crimes as necessary to establish a sense of control.
So, no, he wouldn’t be coming back to Illinois because of their little raid the night before. He would consider the loss of Victoria Galer as akin to losing a pawn in a game of Chess. In fact, the only reason he would come back to the facility was…
“We don’t have any newcomers to the project, do we?” she asked.
“Nothing since the last batch that came and went inside a week. That was what…six months ago?” Billy replied.
“Nothing expected?”
“Nope. Rumor on their Intranet is they’ve run out of genetic material.” Billy was still smiling, and Debbie was starting to feel her own features stretching in response. If his humor was this good, it could only mean the agent’s appearance had something to do with them personally, or with someone they knew.
“You think they expect Sherry to come back?”
“Even better,” Billy replied.
“What could be better than that?”
Billy sighed, dragging back his chair at the kitchen table and dropping into it. “That was Doctor Walls on the phone.”
“Okay.”
Doctor Walls was the only scientist left from the original team of geneticists that once included Debbie. Most had left due to problems with the morality of human experimentation. A few had been fired, primarily because Agent Travers didn’t trust them. And there were others—only rumors, naturally—that had been disposed of by the agent. Currently, there were fifteen full-time researchers working on the project, and Doctor Walls was the scientific head of the team.
He was also good friends with Debbie. He agreed with her reasons for leaving yet was fearful for his life and those of his family. He worked diligently to make each bonding a success because he didn’t want to hurt anyone. He walked a line between ensuring his family’s safety and appeasement of his conscience by helping Debbie with her crusade whenever possible.
Billy continued. “He wanted me to know he’d been ordered to pull the files on two of their earlier subjects and prepare for their return. Agent Travers told him their recapture was imminent, a matter of hours, in fact.”
“Well, spill it, Billy! Who are the two subjects?”
“Haven’t you guessed?”
“I’d rather hear you tell me.”
“Spoil sport.”
“But you love me.”
“Of course,” Billy said. “The two subjects are Sherry Galer, and someone called Travis Wilkins.”
“That’s great news for Vicki!” Debbie said, starting to rise from her chair to go relay the information. “I’m sure it’ll make her feel better.”
“It should have Brian jumping through hoops as well,” Billy said, and the subdued tone of his voice caused Debbie to pause in the act of standing.
“I don’t follow you, Billy.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Alright, let’s assume that Brian is hopeful about getting his son back. Victoria certainly painted an appropriate enough picture of him. We all recognize the description. But Brian’s smart enough to realize she could’ve been describing a hundred different young men. After all, Jimmy didn’t have the patent on brown hair and green eyes.”
Billy watched his wife, seeking confirmation of something he suspected. “You don’t believe it, either, I take it.”
“I guess you could say I’m like Brian,” Debbie answered. “I know how much time and effort we expended trying to find Jimmy. And I know that no word has been seen or heard from him in five years. Now this sudden appearance by a young man with a completely different name, who just happens to have a resemblance to our missi
ng boy? No, it’s too large a coincidence.”
“Good thinking,” Billy said softly, that small smile of his returning.
“Okay…where did I go wrong?” she asked. She couldn’t help a smile, thinking he looked entirely too much like a toddler with a stolen cookie in his mouth when he smiled like that.
“Doctor Walls said one other thing.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What did he say?”
Billy’s smile widened. “He said that Travis Wilkins is a false name imprinted on the subject after a failed attempt on the lives of a certain subject’s parents. That subject’s name was James Jennings.”
2
Agent Travers enjoyed riding shotgun. He felt like he was getting a taste of how people like the Director traveled, able to concentrate on the hundred-and-one things demanding your attention while still getting where you needed to be next. No wonder the everyday man seemed so inefficient while those in power always got shit done. Of course, there was a time when it was good and proper to assert control over your own destiny. In times like those, he drove.
For now, he relaxed in the passenger seat of the rented Nissan Maxima as Agent Kirkson ferried them from the Enterprise location on Virginia Beach Boulevard to the Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital, the only trauma center in the city. According to Frazier, the Navy Captain was still in the Emergency Department awaiting an operating room. His condition was stable, which didn’t surprise Buck.
One of the first lessons at the academy had been not only how to shoot, but where to shoot. A properly placed gut shot was less dangerous than a reckless leg wound, in many cases.
Buck smiled. Despite the setbacks of the morning, everything was coming together now. The Emergency Department was the perfect setting for what he had in mind—barely controlled chaos with dozens of people in scrubs and lab coats whisking around. No one would notice Kirkson and Frazier getting a plastic mold of the captain’s hand. No one would pay attention to just one more doctor and a solitary nurse entering the room, giving one more shot. By the time it kicked in, they would be heading out the exit.
