Mindsiege

by Heather Sunseri

  “Back off, Jack,” Fred stepped between them.

  Jack backed up and leaned against the opposite counter, his arms crossed. Kyle’s eyebrows shot up as he and I made eye contact.

  Georgia finally spoke up, cutting the tension that was growing like algae. “So, what are we going to do? Do we move? Do we stay?”

  “What do you mean, move?” I asked. And was I included in her plans to move? “Why would you move?” Of course, I didn’t even know where we were. I hadn’t ventured outside since we’d arrived here more than two days ago.

  “Well, thanks to you, our covers could be blown,” Jonas said, his mouth hidden by the edge of his coffee mug. The way his eyes drilled into me unnerved me.

  “Jonas, I’m warning you…” Jack straightened, his shoulders back. A vein on the side of his neck quivered.

  “What is all of this really about?” I asked. What’s going on here? Why are you yelling at Jonas?

  Jack shook his head at me.

  “Friday night was a disaster.” Leave it to Georgia to be the honest voice in this lot.

  I agreed with her, but… “What do you mean?”

  “You were supposed to run, not end up here. Jack said you would run.”

  Jack shook his head. “Stop it, Georgia.”

  “Stop what, Jack? You’ve protected her long enough. I don’t see a fragile girl about to crumble before us.”

  Jack crossed the room. He slid his hand into mine. “This is all new to her. And we all still have a lot to learn.”

  “No, she’s right,” I said. “You’ve protected me. We got away from Wellington and bought ourselves some time to figure out what’s truly happening.”

  Jonas let out an under-his-breath chuckle. Jack gripped my hand tighter.

  What’s with you? I asked.

  Later.

  “So, what have you decided?” Georgia asked me. “Jack must return to Wellington. What will you do?”

  I glanced at Jack. I knew he intended to return to Wellington. He wouldn’t have left if it hadn’t been for me. He needed to return and watch over Addison, who was like a sister to him. I shuddered just thinking about the story of a horse crushing her skull when she was seven years old.

  If Addison were to wake, Cathy and Dr. Wellington would know that I healed Addison’s brain injuries Friday night—that I did exactly what they suspected I could do. And if they were to discover my abilities, everyone in this room was convinced that they’d stop at nothing to find me again. They’d force me to join their cause, whatever that cause was.

  Cathy had pretended to be Jack’s caring and loving mom one minute, then imprisoned us with an electric fence around our school the next. And Dr. Wellington, president of Wellington Boarding School and brother to Cathy DeWeese, had allowed her to interfere without ever explaining their ultimate intentions.

  What I feared most was that they could force me to use my unnatural abilities—abilities I knew little about—against my will.

  Someone was definitely inside my head this morning, controlling my actions and forcing me to hurt the one person in my life I would die to protect.

  I studied the people in the room, each of them waiting for me to answer Georgia’s question. My heart tightened. I knew what I had to do. I dropped Jack’s hand and massaged the bridge of my nose.

  A presence entered my head. A presence that was not Jack.

  “Lexi?” Jack said. “You okay?”

  My head jerked toward him. “Fine. Why?” Could the presence inside my head hear my thoughts? My knees began to shake. I was unsteady on my feet.

  You’re a good actress, Lexi. Don’t let them suspect that someone’s inside your head.

  Georgia stared at me, still waiting for me to answer. Fred and Kyle whispered to each other in the corner. Jonas had turned away and was rinsing his coffee mug in the sink.

  What do you want from me? I thought to the presence.

  Tell them you’ll return to Wellington.

  No. I can’t go back there. I wanted to go back to Wellington, to my friends, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t allow Cathy DeWeese, or anyone else, to control me.

  You can. And you will. Do I need to remind you what I can make you do?

  Why do you want me to go back there? I tucked my clammy hands into my armpits, hugging myself.

  I need you to do something at Wellington. You’ll find out what when the time is right.

  My eyes found Jack’s. A line formed between his brows. “What is it?” He pulled one of my hands free and wrapped his fingers around mine, brought me closer to him, and slid his other arm around my waist.

  “Nothing. I’m fine.” I dared a smile as I told a flat-out lie. I hated lying to him after everything we’d been through. “Georgia, I will not put you and your friends in danger. I won’t be staying here, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Where will you go?” Fred asked.

  “I think it’s probably better you didn’t know.” Mainly because I didn’t know where I would go. But it wouldn’t be Wellington.

  Jack slid inside my head and poked around. I felt his familiarity. The other presence had gone silent, but I assumed he hadn’t gone far. What are you thinking? Jack asked.

  I shrugged and swallowed hard. That our lives are a mess.

  “I thought we always planned to stick together if and when we found others like us.” Fred was obviously the more naïve of the bunch. His voice and face screamed fear.

  “That would have been true if someone weren’t trying to kill one of us.” Georgia was the cynical one. But she was right. I’d put her and everyone in the room in danger if it was my ability someone was after. More likely, we each endangered the others just by being together.

  “What changed, Georgia?” Jack asked. “You welcomed us Friday.”

  “I’m not a monster, Jack. You needed our help, and I know you would do the same for any of us. But we’re going to be safer if we split up. I hate to think what would happen if the wrong people found us all in one place. We know how to get in touch with each other.”

  That stung. I didn’t know how to get in touch with the three that lived here. Then it dawned on me. “You guys don’t trust me.” Georgia stood tall, shoulders squared. Fred refused to make eye contact with me. Jonas smirked.

  Kyle looked offended and ready to fight. At least I had one friend besides Jack.

  I pulled my hand from Jack’s grip, turned, and exited the kitchen without another word. I didn’t have to explain myself to my fellow freak club. They didn’t want me around? Well, the feeling was mutual.

  In the bedroom where I had slept, I searched for the very few things I had managed to bring from Wellington.

  “They hoped you would heal Sandra.” Jack’s voice startled me from the doorway. “Seth led them to believe that she’d figured out a way to cure the side effects they all suffer from after using their abilities.”

  “They would trust her?”

  “No,” Jack laughed. “They were hoping Seth would restrain her and make her do what they wanted.”

  Seth, neurosurgeon and brother to Sandra Whitmeyer, seemed to be the one person everyone trusted to be honest about the history of our origin. He helped me tap into my ability to assess brain disease and injury, and ultimately heal. But I’d only done that once. And I still wasn’t so sure about Seth.

  “Don't they know how ridiculous that sounds? It’s his sister we’re talking about.”

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe. Cathy had intended to subdue her Friday night. Remember the syringe she filled?”

  “What? I thought that was meant for me.” Cathy had ordered me to use my healing abilities to bring Sandra out of the coma. She had held a filled syringe like a weapon the entire time. But rather than follow her wishes, I flushed some sort of drug from Jack’s body and healed Addison’s brain injury instead.

  “No, the sedation was meant for Sandra, not you. She would have drugged Sandra if you had pulled her out of the coma.”

  “When I didn
’t bring Sandra out, Cathy tried to use it on me.”

  “Yes, but I was faster and turned it on her. I don’t think she meant to harm you.”

  Not harm, maybe, but punish and control, for sure.

  Jack knew I wasn’t about to heal Sandra without knowing more information. I picked up my backpack from the floor and sorted through it. I had my small computer, a few clothing items, and my cell phone, which I stuffed into the back pocket of my jeans. I also had the large envelope Jack had given me buried in the bottom of my pack. Not the safest place for it, but I felt a little safer knowing I had the means and credentials to run if I needed to.

  Jack sat on the bed beside my bag. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes at the image of me holding a knife high above him.

  “Hey.” He stood and reached his fingers to my face, brushing hair off my forehead and tucking the strands behind my ear. “We’re going to figure this out.”

  I swiped at my cheek where a tear escaped. “Yes, we are. But you need to get to Wellington and fix things with your mom, and check on Addison.”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “Yes, you can. I’ll be fine.” I had my own agenda—which included identifying Smoking Man.

  “What do you mean? Where will you go?”

  “I’ll call Marci. Dad obviously trusted her. And I’m fairly certain she knows a lot more than she’s been telling me.” I also needed time to read Dad’s journals. “You can message me through the link I gave you. If my dad set it up, it’s safe.”

  “I’m going to go talk to Jonas. He can go with you until I can get back to you.” He turned to go.

  “Wait!” I grabbed his arm. “Why Jonas? Why not Kyle?” I trusted Kyle way more than I trusted Jonas. “You looked like you could have punched Jonas in there.”

  “Jonas has a similar mind ability to yours, and he tends to get himself in trouble when he uses it. And his panic attacks can be bad. He told me he wouldn’t use his ability until we knew more about the side effects. I was irritated. That’s all.”

  “An ability similar to mine,” I repeated. “As in, he can manipulate people’s actions?”

  “I said similar, not exactly like yours. Look, don’t worry about it. You concentrate on you for now.”

  “Why would you send him with me if he has these issues?”

  “Jonas can be a jerk, but he’s loyal. He’ll protect you better than anyone else out there. And Kyle needs to get back to Wellington. He and I have to play nice until we know more.”

  “What if all the security measures they put in place were actually to imprison everyone there? Isn’t that why we ran? Why Georgia drove a bulldozer through the fence?” My lip quivered and my voice lowered to a whisper. “What if you get there and can’t get back out?”

  Jack slid his hand behind my neck. He leaned in and kissed me. “We ran because I wasn't willing to take a chance with you. Kyle and I won’t be locked away at Wellington. I will not let that happen. Something tells me we’ve misjudged dear ol’ Mom’s motivations to keep us under lock and key.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Whatever dear ol’ Mom’s motivations were, they had inspired our escape.

  Nonetheless, I let Jack go talk to Jonas. But something wasn’t right. I could feel it.

  Chapter Four

  Armed with my backpack, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed fresh air while Jack attempted to arrange my protection.

  I didn’t think I needed a bodyguard, but I did need a ride. I didn’t even know where I was. And I definitely wanted to separate myself from Jack until I figured out who was inside my head trying to harm him. We were better off apart for now.

  I opened the back door and stepped out into the October air. The early morning breeze was cool, but the sun warmed my cheeks instantly.

  The safe house where Georgia, Jonas, and Fred lived was nestled among other older brick houses, very much like the house I grew up in with Gram. Autumn leaves rustled in the wind, their vivid oranges and yellows fluttering high above me. A rusty-chained swing creaked at the house next door. And beyond that, railroad tracks.

  Embers in the fire pit in the middle of the patio still smoked from the night before, giving off a distinct campfire-like scent. Eight Adirondack chairs were scattered around the area. I imagined the threesome having small gatherings at their house often. I could easily picture them living a normal life together. To their outside friends, assuming they had friends, they were simply three roommates starting out in life.

  A small twinge of jealousy churned in the pit of my stomach. I wanted friends, normalcy, to live on my own away from the threats that haunted me now.

  I followed a line of stepping stones around the side of the house to a gate in the picket fence that enclosed the backyard. A couple of guys walked by the front of the house. Satchels crossed their chests and hung low at their hips. Another passerby sped by on a bike, a backpack strapped to her back.

  We were close to a school. I glanced back at the railroad tracks again. We had to be near the University of Kentucky. There were a lot of older brick homes near the football stadium, from what I remembered from the few times I had visited campus.

  I heard voices coming from the front of the house.

  “Jonas, I can’t send her out alone,” Jack said.

  I squeezed between a bush and the side of the house, positioning myself so that I could see Jack, Jonas, and Georgia standing on the front porch, and clearly hear their conversation. Luckily, they were too engrossed in their discussion to notice me.

  “Take her with you,” Georgia suggested.

  “You know I can’t do that. They’ll force her to heal Sandra, and it could kill her.”

  “You don’t know that, Jack.” Jonas’s tone was more serious than it had been earlier that morning. “We need Sandra. What if she can take away your nausea and how sick you get when you heal people?”

  Jack and I hadn’t had time to discuss whether we actually believed Sandra could heal some of these symptoms we suffered. I would argue we had these abilities and these side effects because of Sandra.

  “Speaking of,” Jack said, “want to tell me why you suffered a panic attack this morning?”

  “I was just playing around.” He paused and looked away, almost directly at me. I glued my back to the side of the house and out of their sight, praying he hadn’t seen me eavesdropping. “There’s this hot girl next door. I wanted to see if I could get her to undress in front of the window.”

  Ewww. Gross.

  “Sounds like it was quite a panic attack for such a small request,” Jack said, seemingly quite unaffected by what a pervert Jonas was.

  “Now you see why I need Sandra. I can’t have even the smallest tasks sending me into a full-on crazy episode.” Jonas tapped his head with his knuckles.

  I peeked around the side of the house. Studied Jonas. His hand shook nervously at his side, then reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small object.

  “None of this changes the fact that Lexi doesn’t want to accept that part of her genetic makeup yet.” Jack—always the optimist.

  He’d been so supportive of me as I discovered what we were. There was no doubt in my mind that he would continue to try to shield me as we searched for more information about what it meant to be cloned and how we were genetically modified.

  “Yet?” Georgia repeated. “But you think she will, eventually? Will she become a part of The Program?”

  By piecing tidbits together, I had learned that we each had special abilities, some similar, some not. Jonas had an ability similar to mine if he could force a girl to undress. And we all seemed to have certain adverse side effects—nosebleeds, projectile vomiting, panic attacks. I studied the deep lines across Georgia’s forehead. She was worried. Did she have some supernatural ability? Or even more important, did she suffer greatly when she used it?

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “I promised her I would help her run if tha
t’s what she wanted. Not a single one of us should be forced to embrace this life that was chosen for us.”

  “Fine.” Jonas lifted the object up to his mouth. It was a cigarette. “I’ll take her wherever she needs to go. And stay with her if necessary. It would be my pleasure.” His words rolled right over the smirk that spread across his lips as he stuck the cigarette in his mouth. When he flicked the lighter and the flame sparked, I flinched at both the noise and the fire.

  “It’s necessary. Don’t forget someone tried to kill both of us last week. And Cathy was ready to imprison us at Wellington Friday night.” Jack shook his head and added, “I’ve got to confront my dear mother.”

  “If Lexi needs to come back here, we’ll deal,” Georgia added. “We need to watch over each other.”

  I stood there, my back plastered to the brick. My heart raced as a suppressed memory surfaced. Images of the previous night flashed back to me. Images of me by the fire pit. Fred had played a guitar and sung.

  My eyes darted around the yard beside the house. I drilled the palm of my hand into my chest, attempting to massage my panicked heart. Jack assured me that Jonas could protect me. That he was loyal. Loyal to whom?

  Events of the previous night slowly seeped into the outer fringes of my mind. Images that at first seemed like distant memories were becoming clearer. Jonas had stomped out a cigarette at my feet last night. He practically admitted to drowning me in the pool. He forced Kyle to stick his arm in the fire.

  “Thank you, Georgia,” Jack said, snapping me back to the present. “Kyle and I will be leaving shortly. I’m fairly certain Lexi will be ready to leave when I do.”

  My mind reeled through memories or dreams—snippets of reality—that I suspected were planted there by Jonas: like when he pointed a gun at my head a couple of weeks ago, and when he led me outside into the cold on the night the fire alarms were tripped in the Wellington’s girls’ dorm.