Secret Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  “I’m here!” She rushed forward, pounding on the door, searching for the latch. The razor-sharp steel sliced her fingers, but the lock wouldn’t give.

  “Help me!” a child screamed over a wolf’s growl.

  “Your team’s almost there,” Richard cautioned. “Hold on.”

  “But the wolf is with her.”

  The new consciousness behind Ruebens’s wolf image was in Trinity’s mind. Consuming her. Sarah could feel it. She was so close to stopping it. She tugged harder, then pounded the door with her fists. She had to break through.

  “Stay away from the door. Madeline’s bringing the team to you. You just have to—”

  The door’s black aura surged around Sarah, drowning Richard’s voice, smothering her in Trinity’s terror. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear. But she wasn’t letting go.

  “I’m finding you this time, Trinity. I won’t let the wolf have you.”

  She clawed at the metal beneath her palms. Digging through the dark aura, ignoring the pain, she fought with every ounce of energy she had left. Until a streak of blinding brightness flashed through the cracks in the pitted surface, ripping at the steel beneath her fingers. Reaching for her from the other side of the nightmare. Then Sarah became the light and the cracks and the door itself.

  She was the latch flying apart in her hands. She was a lifetime of fear and doubt and guilt and shame, exploding into tiny pieces, ripping at her own skin, peeling away everything but what she needed desperately to find beyond the door. Inside herself. Until there was nothing left but Sarah kneeling, her hands covering her head, crying Trinity’s name the way she had in her childhood dreams.

  The dreams that were finally a reality.

  Richard’s consciousness was gone—his love and his gypsy intuition and his warrior’s logic that had guided her through the projection. Sarah’s link to her sister and the Watcher team was silent. She’d had to leave them all behind to get to this place where she could feel darkness closing in on the blinding brightness just beyond her closed eyes. Anger was still seething. Trinity’s cries were still searing her mind. Her ocean dream’s darkness was gloating, waiting for it’s chance to destroy them both.

  “Open your eyes,” the wolf said, instead of Trinity, “and see what we’ve become . . .”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Sarah?” Richard called into their link.

  She was gone.

  His connection to the nightmare’s matrix was gone.

  He braced his hands on each side of her body and leaned over her exam table until their faces were inches apart. She lay deathly still while her stats, pressure, pulse, and psychic echoes inched closer to the red zone.

  “Talk to me, Sarah. Let me back in.”

  He reached for the tray beside her bed, for the extraction protocol designed to suppress the brain’s dream center, but stopped. He couldn’t pull her back yet. He had to give her team a chance to find Trinity.

  “Her psychic energy is being shielded from us somehow,” the tech closest to Richard said. “We’re no longer tracking her mind’s feedback from the dream. Her levels are off the charts, but she’s no longer streaming information.”

  Jeff’s men were with Madeline now. Their reports were still coming through the group’s connection and the psychic audio transmission Richard had custom-designed to allow the lab to communicate within a projection. The dream had grown dark around them. They’d been following Maddie’s lead, and she’d been secretly following Richard’s instructions to find the door and Sarah. Now they were all stranded in the matrix, and he had nothing. No way to get them moving again in the right direction. Not from the lab.

  “Update coming in from the control room,” one of his techs reported from the lab’s corner workstation. “Two level-one legacy teams are under attack. Their principals are MIA.”

  Two new Watcher teams with critical principals were in crisis?

  Richard joined the seated man, warning signals firing through his mind, his intuition on overload. He kept searching for Sarah’s consciousness while another part of his mind analyzed the significance of a new security breach.

  “Time of contact reported by each team?” he asked.

  The tech pressed indicators on the wall projection in front of them, streaming reports from the compromised satellite locations to the lab.

  “Both report first contact from unknown aggressors two minutes ago. Psychic links to their principals ended at the same time.”

  The same moment that Richard had felt the mind beyond Sarah’s door suck her into whatever reality now had her.

  A new report blipped to life on the lab’s transparent wall.

  “Bursts of psychic energy detected at the center complex,” the tech said.

  Richard pressed his fingers to the display, resizing the readings and calling up new details, searching for the answers he needed.

  “Same time stamp.” He pressed the receiver at his ear. “The center’s making its move,” he said to the lieutenant on call. “Inform the council. Lock down all legacies. All Watchers return to quarters and await further instructions. Escalate mission planning for both initiating center reconnaissance contact and repelling an attack.”

  Something was wrong. The certainty of it scratched up Richard’s spine as he removed the receiver from his ear. He placed the device on the nearest workstation and turned to the team dreaming behind him.

  It was as if the nightmare had been waiting for Sarah, no matter how difficult it had been for her to find Trinity’s door again. And now Sarah’s consciousness was beyond the Brotherhood’s control at the exact moment that they recorded the first traceable psychic activity at the center complex since Ruebens’s death. The council’s logical conclusion would be that Sarah’s gifts were fully at the mercy of whatever the center was doing.

  “Disengage the dream matrix?” the tech monitoring Sarah’s stats asked.

  “Not yet.” Richard’s hand closed over the pouch of meds hooked onto the waistband of his scrubs.

  It was entirely possible that what he was about to do would worsen the situation he’d led his brotherhood and the woman he loved into. But he had only moments before the decision would be removed from his control, and he could see no other viable alternative.

  He let go of Sarah’s recovery medication and returned to the tables at the center of the mission team. Shielding his mind from his lab techs, he mentally disabled the psychic receiver translating the team’s sleeping energy into the electronic circuitry that kept the lab informed of their progress and communications.

  “We’ve lost contact with the mission team,” someone said. “Biofeedback is off-line.”

  “Incoming transmission from the council,” the tech manning the corner workstation announced.

  “Handle it.” Richard aligned his fingers with the pressure points that would drive his consciousness to the heart of the minds he could still reach in the dream.

  “But it’s the council. They—”

  “I said handle it!” Richard closed his eyes, harnessing his skill at connecting with and manipulating others’ realities and picturing the water and colors and deepening dream shadows that he’d placed beyond his lab’s grasp.

  A hologram shimmered to life across the lab, an elder arriving to take control of the mission and no doubt shut the projection down regardless of whether it forever stranded Sarah’s consciousness within the matrix.

  Richard’s mind connected with Madeline’s at the same instant that his gaze locked with Jacob’s. Then, releasing every part of his awareness that wasn’t reaching for Sarah’s twin, he left his brotherhood behind, his consciousness connecting fully with Sarah’s nightmare.

  “Where did Sarah go?” Maddie asked.

  Her sister’s thoughts were gone.

  Richard’s thoughts were gone.

  There was nothing. No more images feeding to Maddie about Sarah’s descent to the hideous door she’d finally found. No hint of her sister’s or Metting�
�s minds at all. Nothing.

  “I can’t sense anything.”

  “We’ve lost contact with the dream lab.” Jeff’s image reappeared out of the darkness that had overtaken the dream when Maddie lost track of her twin.

  At least the swirl of gray that represented Jeff’s dream presence reappeared. So did the rivulets of brown that Sarah’s mind had projected for the other Watchers. The murky water around Maddie shimmered with the warriors’ aggressive energies. Then the ocean seized, creating a volatile wake, and Richard Metting’s image emerged within the bubbling aftermath, looking exactly like himself.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jeff’s aura demanded. “You were ordered to remain in the lab.”

  “The Brotherhood’s under attack. The center targeted two of our principals at the same instant that Sarah was pulled through her door.”

  “She’s on the other side?” Maddie swam toward Metting. Richard’s intensity, his unreadable expression, iced through her, when his consciousness had become a welcome pocket of warmth before. “What’s happening?”

  “I can’t feel her thoughts anymore,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, except that this mission has conveniently coincided with a center offensive.”

  “An offensive they can stage”—Jeff’s aura deepened to near black—“because of Brotherhood intel they’re accessing through Sarah’s mind. And now there’s no way for us to stop her from giving them even more.”

  “I’m your way,” Richard said. “I was linked with Sarah when she found the door. I’ll take us there.”

  Richard closed his eyes. The dream swirled around them, pushing, driving, rushing them toward something only he could see.

  “You’ve got a hell of a lot to answer for,” Jeff said.

  “Shut up and let him concentrate.” Maddie didn’t care how many Watcher rules were broken as long as Richard took them to her sister.

  They jerked to a stop so quickly, nausea rolled through Maddie. The bubbling sea settled, revealing Richard’s image and the other Watchers’ auras around her in the same positions as before. Only they were now grouped before Sarah’s hideous door.

  “How . . . ?” Maddie asked.

  “Sarah’s energy,” Richard said. “I’m linked to it now. There were still traces of her within the matrix for me to follow.”

  “And when, exactly, did you form a link strong enough to sense a glimmer of her essence that her twin couldn’t?” Jeff asked. “Did you mate with her? Better yet, how is it that her mission team knew nothing about your connection? Including that you’ve clearly been in constant communication with Sarah, even before we immersed into the matrix.”

  “I got us here.” Richard shot his lieutenant a warning glance. “When none of the rest of you could have.”

  “Because you pushed Sarah to find the link to Trinity and the center before the rest of the team arrived?” Jeff’s aura advanced until it was only inches away from Metting, his voice filled with contempt Maddie had never seen the lieutenant display toward his friend and leader. “You’re why we were a step behind, playing catch-up, aren’t you? You’re the reason whatever consciousness was waiting for Sarah here had the chance to absorb her without the team’s intervention. Now you’re here, leading us, and I have to wonder what the council’s going to think about your interference and whether we should proceed at all.”

  “I shut down the lab’s ties to the dream,” Richard said. “We’re working on our own until Sarah releases the matrix.”

  “Because you wanted to stop the elders’ intervention into the mess you’ve created?”

  “Because we need time to bring Sarah’s consciousness back. Then I’ll reengage, and we’ll return to sort this out with the council. The elders won’t try to pull us back without knowing what’s happening within the matrix.”

  “That’s your priority?” Jeff’s voice dropped to a menacing tone. “Saving the woman you love, even if it means hijacking a mission?”

  “This mission is to reclaim a legacy the council can’t afford to lose, especially now. The center’s attack is too conveniently timed. The council’s obvious next move is to assume Sarah’s the leak, then to abandon her consciousness to the center’s purposes until a Watcher team can infiltrate the complex.”

  “There’s no other explanation for what you’ve allowed to happen.”

  “Except it’s a trap. This dream has been a trap from the start. Sarah’s not the leak. I would have sensed it. Which means—”

  “There’s still a Brotherhood mole helping the center drive this farce, and part of his objective is to make Sarah look culpable for the center’s latest assault.” The black curling at the edges of Jeff’s gray aura began to ease off.

  Maddie turned to face the door that was covered in the black, forbidding aura that had swallowed her sister’s dreaming mind. There was no crimson now. No mottled merging of colors. There was only the soulless black shadow now that hadn’t been able to take control when she and Sarah had been together.

  “They wanted Sarah’s mind to appear aligned with Trinity’s all along,” she said, following Richard’s reasoning. “They’re forcing the council to attack by making our legacy appear to be the Brotherhood’s primary threat. And if we don’t bring Sarah back we’ll have no way of convincing the elders that she hasn’t been a center asset all along. All of this has been about manipulating the Brotherhood into an ambush.”

  Richard’s image stepped to Maddie’s side. “Except they’ve miscalculated significantly.”

  “Miscalculated how?” Jeff demanded.

  “Sarah’s not stranded,” Richard said, and Maddie could feel the faith he was projecting toward the door, maybe even through it. Rock-solid belief that Sarah was still fighting, wherever her consciousness had gone, and that they could reach her.

  “She’s not helpless anymore,” he said. “She knows we’ll come for her. Whatever’s going on beyond that door, Sarah’s our conduit inside. We just have to wait for her to open a window and let us in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sarah opened her eyes to the unexpected silence of a cell-like laboratory identical to the one she’d barely survived at the center. White on white—floors, walls, cabinets. The rest stainless steel. Sterile. It was the landscape of the hell Dream Weaver had become, until she’d escaped into Richard’s world of Watchers and new beginnings.

  The wolf’s deep laugh throbbed through her.

  The walls of the laboratory vibrated with the sound, expanding and contracting.

  Sarah spun around, but instead of Ruebens, there was a little girl behind her, strapped to an exam table. Its back was raised, propping her in an upright position. Tubes and wires were attached to her face, her arms, her legs. Monitors and other machines whistled and chirped the child’s physical and psychic status.

  “Trinity?”

  Sarah tried to rush to her, but she couldn’t move from the door. She tried to call to Richard for help, then to the rest of her Watchers, trying to visualize the window that would connect them to her. But her thoughts were no longer her own. Tears blinding her, she stared into the crystal clear, blue eyes staring back from the six-year-old’s solemn face.

  “See what we’ve become . . .” the dream said in Trinity’s voice. The child’s mouth didn’t move.

  A menacing crimson shadow grew between them, blocking Sarah’s view, cloaking the entire room. It seared Sarah with cries of a little girl’s broken innocence, then fury and hatred and determination to make others pay for the emptiness that she’d endured.

  “Stop!” Sarah cried. “I don’t understand.”

  But she did understand. Too well. It felt as if her own memories were attacking her. The mania raging inside Trinity was as familiar as Sarah’s own heartbeat. She’d endured the same hopelessness of being lost to her strange abilities, abandoned to them, while her mind disintegrated and the peaceful, quiet world she craved slipped further away.

  Sarah’s life had been a prison long before
she lapsed into her coma. No one had ever said to her what she could feel Trinity needed to hear.

  “I’m sorry,” she told the child, her heart breaking as the haze refused to clear. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to help you.”

  She couldn’t move closer. She couldn’t hold out her hand to Trinity while she tried to help the child understand who she was and what she’d been created for.

  “I’ve known about you my entire life,” Sarah said. “Somehow, I’ve always known. I’ve heard your cries, but I’ve never been able to understand.”

  “You didn’t want to understand,” the wolf said from somewhere Sarah couldn’t see, somewhere too close to Trinity. “You never wanted the truth that would bring you to this place.”

  “Whose truth?” Sarah’s hatred for the dead man raged. “Yours? You turned me into a monster. You wanted me to kill people.”

  “I showed you what you were born to be,” he said. “But you were useless.”

  “You almost destroyed me.”

  “What have I destroyed?” the wolf asked, his voice changing, rising, becoming younger. “Except your ridiculous fantasy that you can become a healer, like your sister. Or what is it you want to be now? A Watcher? A savior, instead of the powerful weapon that your mind has the potential to become? Thankfully, we’ve taken that decision out of your hands. Your legacy’s destiny is now safely back where it belongs.”

  “We?”

  “Of course,” he said in the little girl’s voice. The crimson hiding Trinity from Sarah’s view began to evaporate.