Mindspeak

by Sunseri, Heather

  I couldn’t believe it. I actually saw the spots that needed repair—the tiny holes causing the leaking of cerebral fluid in the brain, thereby causing her state of unconsciousness. What would happen when I healed Sandra Whitmeyer, the mastermind behind an army of cloned healers? Was I destined for imprisonment at Wellington? A life of being forced to play God for the mad scientists who killed my father?

  Were Cathy, Dr. Wellington, Seth and Sandra all conspiring with the IIA to control the clones who were just beginning to learn about their abilities? Would I let them control me?

  No, thank you.

  I could hear Cathy tapping the syringe against her palm. What would she do to me if I failed? Could I live with myself if I succeeded?

  I turned my attention to Jack, picturing his brain in my head. It was perfect. Just like a picture from a textbook. Except, by some miracle, I could see a substance binding itself to the receptors of many of the neurotransmitters. Like Ambien, only stronger.

  A chill started at the base of my neck and traveled like an avalanche down my spine. I needed this boy lying in that bed. He had become so important to me. A lifeline. What would he tell me to do right now? My stomach clenched.

  Think, Lexi.

  Next, I pulled up the image of Addison’s brain. It wasn’t her brain that captured my attention, but the condition of her skull. A large, disfigured circle on the back of it was a different color from the rest of the skull. Like it had been replaced with artificial matter.

  Jack. He had healed her other injuries—the skull, maybe—but not the brain. That was what Seth had told me. Addison’s brain was nothing like the perfection I had just seen in Jack’s. Addison’s brain showed two major contusions to the front and right sides.

  A huge weight pressed down on my chest. I forced my breathing to be steady and controlled.

  “What is she doing? Is it working?” Dr. Wellington asked. The natives were getting restless.

  I kept my eyes shut tight. It was decision time. I had seen the brains. I had no idea if I could heal or even help any of them. Or what would happen to me if I did.

  “Remember who she’s cloned from. Who knows what she’s doing,” Cathy said with enough sarcasm to practically break my concentration. “It goes against my better judgment to even allow her here.”

  “She’s never tried this. Give her time.” Seth was a walking contradiction. One minute he reminded me that I had no choice but help his sister, and in the next, he protected me. Still, I feared what his reaction would be when I failed to bring his sister out of the comatose state—when he no longer needed me.

  I blocked them all out and concentrated. If I had any hope of staying alive, I was going to have to give them something they wanted. If I had any hope of escaping, I had to go against the beliefs and values I’d held firmly for most of my life.

  Did I have to do it their way? Was there another way? I may have been created with a purpose, but I also had a choice. I would find a way to accept my fate and use it for good. Or I would die trying.

  I blocked everything out of my head. All sounds. All smells. All visions. Except for Jack and Addison. More specifically, I brought up their brains like I was viewing them on an X-ray reading machine.

  Then I honed in on the many receptors inside Jack’s head, all coated with a substance—a drug—designed to make him sleep and block me out. With my mind, I flushed that substance out of his brain, through his body and into his stomach. There, like bad shrimp, it churned until it had to be expelled.

  Jack’s breathing changed from a slow constant to a more rapid inhale and exhale. Even though I kept my eyes shut, I heard the sound of liquid hitting the bed and the floor in front of him as he projectile-vomited everywhere.

  Cathy shrieked.

  “Ugh!” Kyle shouted.

  Jack gasped for breath. “What the hell?” I suppressed a smile.

  The smell hit me, playing with my own gag reflexes.

  Tightness began to creep up the back of my neck. A slow fire ignited at the base of my head. I felt woozy. Similar to how I’ve always felt when I mindspeak, but amplified.

  Once again, I shut out everything in the room that didn’t matter. If I had any hope of doing what I needed to do, I had to concentrate.

  I entered Addison’s brain having no idea how to help her. I only knew I had to try. Like Jack’s, the receptors inside Addison’s brain were coated with a substance that I assumed kept her securely in a coma while the rest of her head injuries slowly healed.

  Thinking that Addison might not survive the violent throwing up I had just put Jack through, I decided I would bypass doing anything with the foreign substance keeping Addison safely in sleep.

  Instead, I focused on the contusions, massaging the larger one with my mind and willing the indentation to the brain matter outward.

  The outer rim of her brain began to transform and smooth over. The contusion had all but disappeared when the throbbing pain behind my eyes worsened.

  I swayed. I reached out a hand and steadied myself on the bed beside me. I wasn’t sure I could keep going.

  “What is going on here? Why is Lexi here, Seth?” Jack’s voice broke through my concentration. “Lexi, what are you doing?”

  “You can’t stop her now,” Cathy said. “You’ll kill her.”

  “How can you be sure this won’t kill her anyway?”

  “A risk we had to take.” I heard the frigid temperature of Cathy’s words.

  I tried again to shut out their voices.

  Lexi, can you hear me? You don’t have to do this.

  I did though. I couldn’t stop now. Jack was going to help me escape tonight and leave him here. He never would have asked me to heal this innocent little girl who was like a sister to him.

  Now, he wouldn’t have to.

  When I was nearly certain I wouldn’t collapse from the throbbing in my head or the dizziness, I got to work on the second contusion. Though smaller on the surface, it ran deeper. The tissue beneath the surface was a dull gray color. Still, I managed to nurse the injury while fighting the increasing feeling of nausea and blocking out the voices in the room.

  Slowly the concave area of the brain pushed out. The tissue gradually took on a healthier color, similar to the perfection of Jack’s brain.

  The pain behind my eyes grew in intensity. I gripped the sheet on the bed beside me.

  “Lexi?” Jack’s voice was like a soothing drug.

  Skin brushed against my arm. My eyes sprang open. Jack’s dark blue eyes were the first things I saw. The room tilted. The walls seemed to close in. I stepped backwards to catch my balance and bumped into a rolling cart. I reached for Jack, but missed him completely as my eyes went fuzzy.

  Both hands grabbed at air as I slowly fell backwards. Jack reached for me, his eyes wide. It was too late. I collapsed to the floor.

  Jack kneeled beside me. I stared up at him. “What are you feeling? What hurts? Do you feel sick?”

  I blinked once. Twice. Too many questions. My head was an exploding inferno. I grabbed on to his soaked shirt and pulled him to me. His ear to my mouth. “I did it,” I whispered. “I healed the damage to her brain.”

  He pulled back. Instead of relief and happiness, his face registered alarm. His eyes were huge. He gripped my shoulders with each hand.

  I opened my mouth to say something else, but the words did not come. His face grew fuzzier until the entire room faded to black.

  ~~~~

  My eyes fluttered open. I stared up at a white, tiled ceiling. I turned my head. I was still on the floor.

  “Lexi, can you hear me?”

  The voice. I recognized it from recent dreams. I placed my palms on the cold floor and pushed myself up. I fully expected to see the faceless Smoking Man. Instead, I saw Kyle. I reminded myself that Kyle was not Smoking Man.

  I focused on Kyle’s dark brown eyes. Was I dreaming?

  Instead of cigarettes, I smelled something worse. I crinkled up my nose, and looked around. A d
isgusting yellowish-brown substance covered the bed Jack had been lying in and the floor around it.

  Dr. Wellington lay sprawled on the floor. Out cold, it appeared. Cathy was lying in a fourth bed beyond Sandra.

  “What happened?” I asked Kyle.

  “Cathy tried to inject you with something after you didn’t heal Sandra, but Jack turned it on her. She’ll be out for a while.”

  “And Dr. Wellington?”

  “I punched him.”

  Jack had Seth in a stranglehold, pushed up against the wall on the other side of the room. “You promised you’d get her out of here.” His forearm pressed into Seth’s neck.

  “I couldn’t,” Seth choked out. “You of all people know why.”

  “Jack,” Kyle said, “Jack, we have to go. I can’t keep this up forever.”

  “Keep what up?” I asked, confused.

  Kyle reached a hand to me. He pulled me to stand. My legs felt funny. Weak and tingly. Like they were asleep.

  I pushed my fingers into my thigh and barely felt it.

  Jack let Seth go, and Seth just turned and stared at us, rubbing his neck where Jack had been pressing. Surprisingly, he seemed to forgive Jack immediately. “I’ll give you as much time as I can, but you need me here on the inside. Cathy and Roger need to trust me.”

  Jack crossed the room. He reached to brush hair out of my face and tucked the strands behind my ears. “Can she hear me?”

  Strange question. Why would he ask that?

  “Ask her.”

  He raised a brow at me. I nodded. My head felt strange. Tingly like my legs.

  “She’s unconscious,” Kyle said. “But I think I can direct her well enough to get us out of here.”

  “Can you run?”

  I shrugged.

  “I need you to run. If we have any hope of escaping, you need to run.”

  Not giving me any more time to deliberate, he grabbed my hand and pulled me through the door. The hallway was long and white, like before. Very much like the first dream I ever had with Jack in it. The night my dad was killed.

  We ran together in that dream, too.

  This time, Kyle followed close behind.

  When we reached the top of the stairs, we took a hard turn to the right toward the parking lot.

  “She left her backpack around here somewhere. We need it,” Jack said to Kyle.

  I turned. No one followed us. Not even Seth.

  “It’s behind the bush over there,” I mumbled and pointed with my finger to where I knew we would find the bag.

  Jack looked at me strangely, then at Kyle. “Are you sure she’s asleep?”

  “Positive. She’s not the only one designed to see inside people’s brains. She’s in a state of non-rapid eye moment, slow-wave sleep.”

  We jogged toward the bush. The campus seemed too quiet. My peripheral vision was slightly fuzzy.

  “Will she do anything you tell her to do right now?”

  Kyle didn’t answer. They were talking about me like I wasn’t even there. So, I was asleep?

  Finally, Kyle did answer. “No. I don’t think I could get her to hurt herself or others. But I could lead her anywhere I wanted her to go.”

  “Like the night she jumped into the ice-cold swimming pool and forgot how to swim?” Jack glared at Kyle.

  “Jack…” Kyle stood with me while Jack rummaged behind the bush and came back out with my pack. “That wasn’t me.”

  Jack dusted off the backpack and tossed it over his shoulder. “You understand why I’m having trust issues right now. Someone with a similar ability tried to kill her. If not you, then who?”

  “I’ll do what I can to earn your trust. We need each other. And we’ll figure out who’s inside her head.”

  “I’m counting on that.”

  Jack reached for my hand again. Just as his fingers wrapped around mine, a loud, whirring noise sounded. An alarm. My hands flew to my ears.

  Both boys turned toward the noise. “Crap,” Jack said. “We have to hurry.” He looked at me. “You hear me? I want you to run as fast as you can.”

  Instead of heading into the parking lot, we took off toward the stables. We ran along the edge of the barn to the far side then darted into the woods behind it, very close to the spot where Jack had found me sneaking back into Wellington after discovering him at Addison’s hospital bedside.

  I did as I was told and ran. Trees passed by us at rapid speed. I stumbled several times, but Jack steadied me.

  Something tugged at the back of my mind. We couldn’t go much further, but I didn’t know why.

  Then I saw it. The electric fence.

  I pulled on Jack’s hands. “We can’t. It’s turned on.”

  “She’s right,” Kyle said. “I can hear the buzz.”

  Flashlights darted through the trees behind us. Dogs barked. We were being chased. It felt real, but at the same time, I still thought I might wake up from a nightmare any second.

  Jack pulled his phone out of his back pocket. After dialing, he brought the phone to his ear. “We’re here.” He stared at the fence, into darkness.

  Through the shrubbery on the other side, toward the road, I heard the motor of heavy machinery followed by the sound of limbs crackling and small trees crunching. Bright headlights became a spotlight on the three of us, coming straight for us. I gasped.

  Jack pulled me further to the right. I looked behind us at the approaching flashlights. The sound of barking dogs rose above the commotion of the tractor.

  It reached the fence and plowed right through. Sparks flew as the tractor slammed into and tore down the fence.

  Voices erupted behind us. “I see them. Stop!”

  “Let’s go,” Jack said to me. “Watch your step.”

  Flashlights lit our path by people whose faces remained hidden to me.

  “Jack, I’m not sure how much longer I can keep Lexi in this state.” Kyle stepped lightly behind us. “I’m starting to lose her. And my vision is getting weaker.”

  “What do you mean?” Jack’s grip tightened around my hand. “What will happen?”

  “She’ll fall deeper into sleep. Uh…” Kyle hesitated. “She’ll just collapse, I guess. And I’ll go blind.”

  “Shit. Why didn’t you tell me this?” Jack squeezed my hand. “Look at me, baby. We have to hurry, okay?” I nodded. “Step only on grass and dirt. Avoid the wires. They’re live.”

  I still couldn’t see the faces behind the flashlights lighting our path to the other side.

  I stepped on grass just like instructed. I swayed slightly. My head started to go a little fuzzy. “Jack?”

  He turned to me. “Hang on, Lexi.” He steadied me and led me across the wires. “Five more steps.”

  “I’m losing her,” Kyle yelled behind me.

  My vision became weaker. My legs went numb. My equilibrium was off. I reached out my free hand, grabbing for air.

  “Jack, catch her.”

  I stuck a leg forward. Leaned closer to the other side. Two more steps. “Jack!” I screamed out. My feet were leaden; my body was falling like a chopped down tree.

  I felt a hand on my opposite arm. Jack leaped in front of me, then took me with him. I soared through the air, over the rest of the electrical fence.

  We landed with a hard thud on the other side of the fence. Jack’s body cushioned my fall. He coughed like the air had been knocked out of him.

  I lifted my head briefly. My fingers grazed the outline of his jaw. His lips. His face came in and out of focus. “You’re always there to catch me,” I whispered just before I drifted away.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Voices entered my consciousness in hushed tones.

  “She’s going to be fine,” a female voice said.

  “You don’t know that.” Jack’s voice was a bit raspy. “Why won’t she wake up?”

  “She will. It hasn’t been that long.”

  “It’s been almost two days.” His voice sounded louder this time.

&
nbsp; Two days?

  “Why don’t you go take a shower? I’ll stay with her.”

  I recognized the voice. It was Georgia. The African-American girl with crazy eye shadow from the bar where Jack’s band played. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “No. I’m not leaving.”

  I felt a drop of warm moisture land on my hand. Jack sniffled loudly.

  “I’m going to help with dinner. Everyone’s going to be hungry.” There was a long pause. Then, from further away, Georgia said, “Does she know?”

  Know what?

  Jack must have given her a look because she continued. “Does she know about Fred, Jonas, and me?”

  “No. Never really got a chance to tell her.”

  I heard the sound of footsteps and a door closing. I willed my eyelids up. They were so heavy.

  Jack scooped my hand into his. “I should have told you everything the minute I met you. Or when you figured out we were part of the cloning project.” The weight of Jack’s head pressed down on my hand. “I had so many chances to tell you everything. I thought running would be better for you.”

  I wiggled the fingers of my other hand. Then I tried my toes. I wanted to reach for Jack, but failed at lifting my hand. I wanted to tell him I forgave him. He was here now.

  I would never let him push me away again.

  “How can I tell you the rest now? After what you did for me?” Please wake up.

  I am awake.

  Jack lifted his head away from the hand he squeezed and gasped. “Open your eyes.”

  I’m trying. I can’t. I’m so tired.

  How are you feeling?

  I’ve been better.

  “Why did you do it? Why did you heal Addison?” he practically sobbed.

  For you.

  Jack sucked in a labored breath and let it out slowly. I thought you might die.

  Is she okay?

  “Seth is working on it,” he said. “Hopefully, he’ll get her moved before Cathy and others figure out what you did.”

  What do you mean? If Seth knew what I did, he’d be coming for me.