Dark Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  “Kayla Lawrence’s dream responses,” he continued, “were on target until—”

  “—until her mind regained control from Alpha, and she nearly blew her head off in her sleep.” Chansley Whittiker’s pointed, ratlike nose was flushed at the tip. “With a dream-planted weapon there are no records of you designing into our prototype’s programming. You’ve insisted on projecting nonlethal dream symbols. You’ve preached keeping a clean dichotomy between your alpha testing work, and the weapons programming our client wants at beta stage.”

  “Controlling the host’s responses is difficult enough when Sarah’s embedding everyday objects and tasks into Lawrence’s subconscious,” Richard explained. First, tasks like Sarah directing Kayla Lawrence to take a different way to work each day. To eat red meat for lunch when Lawrence was a diehard vegetarian. Then increasingly disturbing variations to test the limits of the host’s mind. But nothing homicidal or suicidal. “Adding violent variations would—”

  “Result in the disaster we observed last night?” Whittiker demanded. “With each failed simulation, you come dangerously close to exposing this center’s work. You chose Kayla Lawrence from the list of hosts our client provided. You’ve maintained a stranglehold on overseeing Alpha’s psychic and physical conditioning since you brought her out of her coma. You’ve given us one excuse after another for the side effects of Dream Weaver’s infiltration into her psyche. All while you’ve been allowed free rein. But Sarah Temple’s condition is deteriorating to the point that she’ll be of no use to us soon. And a Beta field test is still nowhere in sight.”

  “Short-term paralysis.” Tad Ruebens ran a finger down the report in front of him. He was the palest man Richard had ever known, including his gray hair and gray beard, even the piercing cruelty of his gray eyes. “Brain bleeds. Seizures. You’ve been cleared to use drug therapy…sleep deprivation…whatever it takes to maintain a subconscious link with the host, control the dream environment, embed programming, and trigger daydream behavior to test the boundaries of Lawrence’s impressionability.”

  And to allow Richard unlimited access to Sarah’s mind, so he could secure her trust and secretly train her for what her life would soon become. Defense tactics, escape strategies, weapons skills—whatever Sarah might need when the time came for her to escape the center and join the Watchers. To help them prevent the kind of evil abomination Dream Weaver would be.

  “This board was fine with the side effects until now.” Richard tempered his challenge with an indifference that threatened to choke him. Projecting confidence was his only means of protecting Sarah until the time was right to get her out of there. “You approved the physical conditioning and rehabilitation I recommended to keep her body strong, so her mind could grow stronger. You’ve trusted me to get to the bottom of every other glitch the program has encountered. What, precisely, is the nature of your concern now?”

  He had to know how much the center’s directors knew, while he scrutinized each of the other scientists to determine who had invaded Sarah’s mind and sent his testing into this latest tailspin.

  Ruebens pressed a button at his elbow. The other scientists at the table—buttoned down in their dress shirts and strangled within an inch of their lives by their neatly knotted ties—shifted in their seats. A 3-D image flickered to life above the table, generated from recessed projectors built into the floor and ceiling at each corner of the room. Its holographic result was equally clear from every chair. With the flip of another switch, video of Sarah’s latest simulation began playing. Without audio the images seemed canned. Like B-movie actors going through the motions. Mad scientist. Subject. Just another day at work.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Tension replaced Richard’s clinical observation of his monitors as he fought to save a year of Trinity’s top secret work, as well as his own responsibilities to the Brotherhood. Frantic movements masked fingers that had been shaking for the first time in his life. He bent closer to his subject. Whispered something. It looked like he was begging, when he should have been dispassionately summoning help.

  Ruebens paused the projection on the image of the back of Richard’s head, his expression and his words obscured by the camera angle.

  Come back to me…Don’t do this…

  “We have a deadline, Dr. Metting.” Whittiker and the other directors frowned at the reminder that the country’s elite scientists were being held to a Department of Defense timetable. “Continued project funding depends on completion of a successful Beta field simulation. Our client wants proof that any psychic weapon we produce will be under strict control. And so far Alpha clearly is not. You’ve had some success, but last night was another setback. How did Alpha’s dream programming direct the host to purchase a weapon? Kayla Lawrence is terrified of violence. That’s what makes her an ideal test subject. And why would Alpha trigger a suicide attempt? How do you suggest we tackle these questions with the DOD?”

  “I suggest you explain what I’ve been telling you in each of my weekly reports.” Richard processed the heightened emotions filling the room. Detected a seething source of darkness. Hatred. But he was unable to pinpoint its source. “That Dream Weaver is nowhere close to Beta-test ready.”

  “That simple explanation isn’t going to fly anymore.” Whittiker glared through the lenses of wire-rimmed glasses as antiquated as his comfort level with Richard’s psychic talents and the cutting-edge parapsychological research the center was peddling to the highest bidder. “Your credentials in the field of dream research are impeccable. Your marginal success has bought you this center’s leniency. But you’ve had over a year. And I’ve once again spent the day trying to explain your theories, and your failures, to a client who likes to keep things simple. After last night’s debacle, the simple fact is that the government’s demanding to know what obstacles remain to executing a field test—one that includes the kind of weapons handling Lawrence displayed last night.”

  “Before I can answer that, I’ll need more time with both Alpha and Kayla Lawrence, once Alpha’s recovered enough to project her next simulation.”

  “And to give you that time, what do you suggest my latest excuse be? That Lawrence’s impending breakdown is threatening to expose us all? Or should I discuss that your alpha prototype’s escalating brain injuries are causing yet another postponement?” He pointed his index finger into the image hovering above their heads. A zoom parameter zeroed in tighter. “Or perhaps I should chat with them about a lead scientist who’s presenting signs of significant boundary issues with his test subject?”

  Richard took his time studying the 3-D image. Cleared his mind. Analyzed. Reverted to battle tactics and narrowed his focus to only what had to be done next. The Brotherhood wouldn’t wait much longer. He had to escalate Sarah’s recovery period and produce a successful shared-dream result that would satisfy the center long enough for him to prepare Sarah for their escape.

  He reached for the hologram, grabbed the transparent corner nearest him, and rotated the image to reveal what he’d embedded just hours before—an altered frontal view of his reaction to Sarah damn near dying on his exam table. Instead of panicked, his gaze in the video was that of a scientist determined not to lose a valuable asset. He flicked several buttons at his elbow, reactivating the recording and engaging the audio he’d digitally spliced into it.

  “Reset, Alpha,” his image commanded with detached calm. “Target release, and reset to zero. Reset. Now!”

  Sarah’s agitation quieted. All body activity ceased, including the rapid eye movement of the dream state required to sustain her link to the host. At that exact moment, thousands of miles away, Kayla Lawrence had woken in hysterics from her psychotic nightmare. She’d been seconds away from blowing her head off with a very real handgun. Exactly the kind of untraceable, violent behavior a secret sector of the U.S. government was looking for in a weapon. A psychic weapon Richard had promised the Brotherhood, and Sarah Temple, that he wouldn’t allow to become a r
eality.

  “Return the subject to her observation suite,” his image ordered the crash team that rushed into the simulation room. In the video, he turned from his misfiring test subject and her now-quiet monitors and began typing his observations into a workstation. “Prep for her next sim.”

  Richard paused the recording. He was once more scanning the other minds in the room, and once again discovering nothing he didn’t already know. And at the moment, it didn’t matter who had pushed his testing to this breaking point. He had to get Sarah Temple out of the center alive. Then he had to find a way to neutralize whoever had trespassed into her unstable mind and escalated the violence of Sarah’s shared dreams.

  “I suggest you tell the DOD,” he said with the same calm he’d overlaid into the recording, “that removing me as the lead will set their testing back months.” Denying them the proof they needed that Dream Weaver was precise enough to target any mind, anywhere—embedding homicidal dreams and then triggering waking action toward whatever target was chosen, no matter how out of character the behavior was for the host. “There isn’t another scientist at this table, in the entire world, who can guarantee them a successful Beta field test. Like it or not, I’m the only shot they’ve got.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Okay.” Jarred was freezing his ass off in the dark parking lot beside Maddie’s apartment building. “Now what?”

  Now, you start the car and drive back to the hospital and work on the patient files breeding like rabbits on your desk…

  Except he wouldn’t be able to work tonight, any more than he had all afternoon. His mind refused to focus on anything but the devastation on Maddie’s face when she’d run from the ER. Something inside her had broken, no matter how amazing she’d been with her patient. She’d fought for that man’s life with nothing more than instinct. A patient who would have bled out without her diagnosis. But saving that father had destroyed her.

  Jarred had tried to hold her, the way he’d tried to draw her closer for months. Months longer than he’d fought to hold on to his ex when she’d asked for a divorce. When something was over, it was over for Jarred. Like when his parents died, and at nine he’d had to find a way to get on with his life. Looking back and regretting what couldn’t be changed was a waste of time.

  Except there he was lurking outside Maddie’s apartment, needing to be sure she was okay. Knowing she wasn’t. He should be firing the car’s engine and peeling rubber out of the lot. But he wasn’t okay, either. Not without Maddie. His concentration was for shit. His mind was fixated on seeing her again, being near her again. Because something had broken inside him, too, when she’d torn herself from his grasp.

  He was a leader in the field of psychiatric care. Rule number one in his world was not basing his own wellbeing on that of a patient’s. But he couldn’t detach from Maddie’s spiraling hold on reality. He couldn’t see a way out, or through, except helping her. Being with her. Fighting alongside her until they figured out what the hell was going on.

  “The accident?” Phyllis’s voice trembled on the other end of the phone line. “Maddie, why are you asking about that night…It was so long ago. Why look back now?”

  “Because…” Maddie clenched her portable tighter and paced across her living room. Because I can’t ask you about Sarah’s madness, or what you’ve been afraid of all our lives, or about a long-dead aunt’s ramblings and whether they might not have been so nonsensical after all. “Because…I need to know what you remember. What happened before we all got to the hospital. Did the other driver make a statement? Do you—”

  “I don’t remember anything, Maddie!”

  The unnatural shrill in Phyllis’s voice stopped Maddie’s pacing.

  “That’s just it, Mom.” Her fear and confusion surged into white-hot anger. “You never remember anything. Every time something scares you, you conveniently check out until your mind blanks on the details that might actually help me deal with what’s going on!”

  “Help you deal…” Fear rattled Phyllis’s words, until they sounded as if they were coming from a stranger. “Maddie, nothing’s going on. I’m fine. Everything’s been fine for a long time. Why now? Why would you think I—”

  “Me, Mom. Everything’s not fine with me!” Though Maddie had been doing a bang-up job pretending otherwise. At least with Phyllis.

  Perfect little Maddie…her mind whispered. You’ve still got everyone snowed…

  “Sarah?” she asked out loud.

  “What?” was Phyllis’s breathy response. “What does your sister have to do with this?”

  How did Maddie tell her? About the nightmares and the mess she’d made in the ER that morning. Or the patronizing voice in her head that sounded like her sister but was clearly Maddie’s own sanity splintering even further. Or…how she knew that Jarred was walking up to her apartment just then…arguing with himself that he shouldn’t be there, but he couldn’t turn away…

  The doorbell rang.

  Maddie jumped, squealing.

  “Honey?” her mother asked.

  Chickenshit, the voice taunted. Sarah’s voice.

  “Damn it!” Maddie cursed, sick and tired of all of it.

  “Honey, you’re scaring me.”

  “Hold on a second.” Maddie had originally planned to drive to her mother’s place to talk about the night of the accident and whether the police had questioned the driver of the truck. But she’d never made it more than a few feet from her couch. “Let me get rid of whoever’s at the door, then I’ll try to explain.”

  Explain what? the voice wanted to know. That there’s an asshole on your porch, and you don’t have the guts to tell him to piss off any more than you have the guts to confront your mother in person.

  Maddie jerked the door open.

  “Piss off,” she spat at the asshole on her porch.

  “What!” Phyllis Temple gasped over the phone.

  “Not you, Mom.” Maddie muffled the receiver against her chest. Fought for control. Get out of my head, Sarah. Just—“Get out!”

  Jarred Keith crossed his arms and leaned against her doorjamb instead—one foot over the threshold.

  “Leave, Dr. Keith,” she croaked. “You have no right to—”

  “To know what the hell happened to me the two times I was with you today?” He sounded as pissed as she felt. “Or to finish my report about you for the hospital administration?”

  Black brows lifted above icy blue eyes, skimming shaggy hair that would have looked unkempt on a less-imposing man. But on Jarred, the slightly ruffled effect was just more of the same. Dark, dangerous, and…alarmingly comforting to Maddie. The same comfort his touch had become after she’d been sick all over herself, and him, in the ER. And it was that touch that she’d run from.

  “Leave, Dr. Keith,” she managed to repeat.

  “After your episode in the ER this morning, you’re suspended from the hospital until I complete my evaluation. I would think—”

  “I saved that man’s life.”

  “Then you had a breakdown in front of everyone. Not exactly a confidence-instilling moment.”

  Maddie swallowed the compulsion to scream one of her sister’s more creative curses. Jarred was right. Smug but right. She’d headed into the hospital that morning so sure she could keep herself together. That today was a fresh start. The same load of crap she’d told herself every other morning.

  Then she’d freaked during her psych appointment. Shrieked at Britton, after pushing him around in front of the staff. Fled while her patient coded. Thrown up all over her shrink—her ex, almost-boyfriend—while she felt more and more of her twin’s madness becoming her own.

  She was a nutcase. Her entire family was a cautionary tale she’d never outrun. One Jarred already knew too much about. And there he was, signing up for more. Maddie shot him a look that suggested she wasn’t the only one who needed professional help. Then she lifted the phone to her ear.

  “…something wrong?” Phyllis Temple was
babbling. “Are you okay?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  Maddie’s visitor stepped past her. A wave of warmth and worry curled around her. She backed away, holding up a finger to ward the man off. He stood his ground, his gaze understanding of all things.

  Her body and her mind clamored to get closer. To let him see more of the parts of her she’d kept hidden for so long. Maddie didn’t fall for men this way. She didn’t let herself lean on anyone, not the way she wanted to crawl into Jarred’s arms every time they breathed the same air. She couldn’t risk that kind of honesty. Staying safe—staying separate—was the only way she’d managed the success she had.

  “Mom, I’m going to call you back,” she said into the phone.

  “Who’s there with you?”

  “Someone from work.”

  “Someone asking about your sister? It’s been years since you’ve looked back, honey. You’ve got enough to worry about at the hospital. Your whole future’s ahead of you. Why—”

  “I need answers, Mom.”

  “Why now? What’s wrong?”

  Wrong?

  Maddie’s gaze tracked Jarred as he helped himself to a tour of her apartment—something she’d never allowed when they were dating. His long-legged, making-himself-at-home stroll came to an abrupt halt beside the couch piled high with blankets and pillows. Her oasis when she couldn’t sleep at night. Which had been every night since the nightmares had started.

  “I’ll call you back,” she insisted. “Really, I have to go.”

  “But your father—”

  “Mom—”

  “It was an accident, sweetie. Your sister—”

  “Mom—”

  “Sarah was already lost. It wasn’t her fault, but your father was so worried, and she was high again and—”

  “Mom!” Maddie shouted, losing patience with her mother’s rambling, because Phyllis still hadn’t said anything more than she ever did. “If you won’t tell me the truth about Sarah, I can’t do this right now.” Jarred turned to watch her come unglued. Her fingers clenched in the hair she’d been tugging at her neck. “I’ll call you later.”