by Anna Durand
A draft tickled her skin.
"Tell me more," the traveler growled. "Where to find her. I need more."
Only four people knew the true identity of Janet Austen and where she lived now. She, Mark, her father, and David served as the sole guardians of the secret. From the beginning, they had concealed Grace's identity because Christine insisted on it. The others had thought her paranoid, but she heeded the soul-deep instinct that urged her to protect her daughter. Since the first time her father told her about Project Outreach, she'd seen the potential for good — and for evil.
A gust of wind tore through the room, nearly knocking her off her feet. Mark caught her, and they floundered into the door with a dull thud.
"Where is she?" the voice shouted.
"I told you all I know," Christine said. "Go there. You'll sense her."
Please go. Please, please, please.
A dark shape separated from the shadows in the far corner. The shape was vaguely humanoid, though far from human. When the being spoke, his voice burned with a quiet intensity that prickled every hair on her body.
"I will go," he said, "but if you lie … "
His voice trailed off, but she heard the silent threat that punctuated the statement.
And then he was gone.
The air changed, though not in any way she could quantify. The difference was intangible, inexplicable.
The door lock clicked.
Mark eased her away from him and reached for the knob. It turned in his hand. He yanked the door open and they fled through the opening, down the corridor. Mark grasped her hand so tightly it began to ache, but she clamped his just as tightly.
At the elevator, they halted. Mark pressed the button to summon the car.
"What are we doing?" Mark asked.
"Running." As she watched the numbers above the elevator door light up one after another, tracing the car's path up the shaft, she said, "What about Dad? He's on his way back from Washington."
"We'll call him once we're on the road."
She shook her head. "We can't take our cell phones or computers. They're trackable."
Mark sighed. "Then we'll find a pay phone along the way."
The elevator stopped with a soft thunk and the doors parted.
He led her into the car, pressing the button for the basement level, where the parking garage was located. The doors slid shut.
Christine watched the numbers count down the floors until the car eased to a stop and the doors opened again, granting them access to the basement level. An alarm bell clanged in the back of her mind, warning her that something was off. Where had all the guards gone? Why was nobody trying to stop them? They weren't allowed to leave the facility, yet so far they'd encountered no resistance.
The guard shack outside the elevator stood empty.
The alarm clanged louder in her mind.
She yanked Mark's hand, hauling them both to a stop.
"Where is everyone?" she said. "Even with the staff reductions, we should've run into guards. So why haven't we?"
"I don't know."
A figure stepped out from behind the guard shack.
Christine jumped — and then she recognized the man.
"David," she said, his name coming out as a heavy sigh. "What are you doing here?"
He stopped several yards away. "Something is wrong. You need to leave immediately."
"Yeah," Mark said, "that's what we're trying to do."
"You can't take your car. It's probably been outfitted with a tracking device."
Christine groaned. "Great. How do we get out of here then?"
David pointed toward an SUV parked three spaces down the row. "Take that one."
"Why?"
"It's Waldron's. He'd never let anyone track him."
"Keys?" she asked.
"Don't worry, I'll start it for you. Once you're far enough away, you'll need to switch cars. Don't use your credit cards or access your bank accounts — "
Mark held up a hand. "Thanks, we'll manage."
Christine scrunched her eyebrows, looking at David. "You can start a car?"
He shrugged. "Probably. It'll take a lot of energy, though, and I may not be able to help you anymore after this."
"We understand."
David looked at her, then at Mark. "Be careful."
With a curt nod to David, Mark seized her hand and dragged her toward the SUV. Once they were inside, with the doors locked, David strode in front of the vehicle. He raised his hands over the hood, hovering them in midair. He closed his eyes. His expression tightened into a grimace. She knew he wasn't actually touching the car, because he lacked the ability to manifest on his own, but David had always mimicked physical gestures as a means of focusing his power.
The tendons in his hands bulged as if he were lifting a heavy object.
It was too hard. He should stop. They could find another way.
She reached for the door handle, intending to fling the door open and shout for him to give up.
The car's engine sputtered, caught, and grumbled to life.
David opened his eyes, dropped his hands, and stumbled backward into the wall. He lifted one hand in a weak gesture for them to go.
Mark backed the vehicle out of the parking space. They sped out of the parking garage without seeing another person, dead or alive. Minute after minute ticked by as they raced down the dirt road that accessed the facility, passing through the invisible gateway. A network of infrared sensors and motion detectors, buried underground, formed an invisible fence around the facility. Trespassers would see nothing but open desert, yet their presence would be detected and any possible threat assessed long before they reached the facility itself.
No other vehicles intercepted them. The SUV jounced over the asphalt lip onto the highway, and Mark swerved the car into the right lane.
All seemed well. They were beyond the facility's perimeter. They could make it to safety.
Deep inside, though, Christine felt a primal instinct warning her that something was coming for them. Power. Darkness.
Death.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Present Day
Where was everyone?" Grace asked. "How did they escape so easily? Did you follow them after they left the facility? "
"Slow down," David said, holding up a hand as if he could push back her questions. "The facility was empty. It was already at minimal staffing levels because it was the weekend. When I triggered the perimeter alarms, I made sure sensors went off on every side so that all the guards had to be deployed. It was the best chance I could give Christine and Mark."
"Why didn't you try to stop the traveler when he cornered them in Andrew's room?"
David's shoulders slumped as his head bowed slightly. "I couldn't. The traveler was too strong. If I'd expended all my energy on fighting him, I never would've been able to clear the facility. I made a conscious choice to leave them in that room while I set about triggering the perimeter alarms. I was fairly certain the traveler wouldn't kill them until he had you."
"Fairly certain?"
She regretted the edge in her voice the instant the words left her mouth. David lowered his head, eyes closing, and ran a hand through his hair. She noticed the tightness around his eyes, the furrowing of his brow and forehead, the darkening of the skin under his eyes, and the paleness of his lips. Christ, he must've burned a tanker load of energy on coming here and sticking around long enough to answer all her questions.
"I'm sorry," she said, reaching out to stroke his hair before realizing she couldn't. His appearance was an illusion. So instead she told him, "I know you would've done more if you could."
"I didn't save them." He spoke in a hushed voice, almost a whisper, keeping his eyes closed as he continued. "I followed them but I couldn't stop the — "
/> "Car crash," she finished for him. "Are you saying it was just an accident?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. Given the circumstances, I doubt it. But I can't know for sure. I had to whip up a localized windstorm to slow down the guards who were on their way back to the facility, to keep them from seeing which direction Christine and Mark went. By the time I got to them, the car was upside down on the side of the road. It was over."
They were already dead. That was what he meant. He got there too late to help them. She could see the guilt etched on his face and feel it rolling off him in psychic waves.
Maybe that was her own guilt spinning through the air around them. Her parents died because of her. Why had she hidden in Texas while a lunatic with supernatural powers hunted them? What kind of person was she?
"It's not your fault," he said, tilting his head to look at her. "You wanted to stay, but your parents insisted you leave and have no contact with them until the situation settled down. It never did."
She wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to close her eyes, bury her face against his neck, and forget about everything. Unfortunately, thoughts kept bubbling up in her brain.
"If you left them alone in Andrew's room," she said, "how do you know what happened in there?"
"When I got to the site of the accident, Christine was still alive — barely. She had just enough time left to tell me what happened and to make me promise I'd watch out for you."
Another thought bubbled to the surface and she paused to consider it before speaking. "If my parents and grandfather were prisoners in the facility, how could Grandpa go on a trip to Washington?"
David shrugged. "I wasn't privy to everything."
"Hmm." She decided to let that go for the moment, considering that he was psychic, not omnipotent. "What's the deal with this golden girl and golden light stuff?"
"I'm not sure."
She resisted the urge to question him more. His face had gone pale, further darkening the shadows under his eyes.
He shut his eyes, sitting motionless and silent for so many seconds that she wondered if he'd gotten too weak to see or speak to her. When he finally opened his eyes, he did not look at her.
"There is a story," he said, "a myth really, about a power that trumps all others. It would make telepathy and manifesting seem like nothing — if it existed. Some of the older RVs, the ones who worked for the CIA back when they toyed with psychic espionage, talked about this power. They feared it." He tilted his head to head up to gaze at the computer screen, which still displayed the list of former participants in the facility's research. "They called it the Golden Power."
She leaned forward, resting one arm on the table. "Why did they fear it?"
"Two reasons." He paused, as if collecting his thoughts. "First, they were afraid it would turn out to have dire consequences for anyone who tried to use it. There is precedence for that fear. Reading minds sounded like a great idea, especially in espionage circles, but it turned out be so overwhelming for the mind reader that no one will even attempt it anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because it will drive you insane." He glanced at her. "And I'm talking completely, irretrievably, frothing-at-the-mouth insane."
"Oh." She gulped back the lump in her throat. "I won't try that then."
He returned his attention to the list on-screen. "The second reason the older RVs feared the Golden Power had to do with the old saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely." She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he held up a hand to silence her. "Patience, I'm getting there."
She pressed her lips together.
A faint smile flickered across his face, vanishing as he said, "First, you need to understand how our psychic abilities work. Our powers emanate from something we call the crossroads. It's where everything in the universe — thoughts, feelings, knowledge, memories — all come together, like roads intersecting. When we access the crossroads, we usually experience it as a field of stars."
Grace felt the blood drain out of her face. A field of stars. Last night, she'd soared out of herself and into a darkness peppered with stars. Floating there, she'd felt free and yet tethered to her body, alone and yet surrounded by … something. No fear. Just a sense of completeness.
"You've seen it," David said. "You remember."
"I saw it once, recently." The blood rushed back into her face, no doubt turning her cheeks a cherry red, as she remembered what they'd been doing at the time she experienced the crossroads. "Um, uh, I didn't realize what it was at the time."
He smiled as if he knew exactly when she'd spun out of her body and into the crossroads. Her blush grew hotter, until she wanted to splash water on her face.
Clearing her throat, she said, "If it looks like a star field, then why do you call it the crossroads?"
"Because when you're inside it, if you concentrate you can resolve the field of stars into a network of bright dots linked by multicolored strands. Sort of like a map."
She didn't know what to say to that, so she kept quiet.
"The crossroads is like a network of interconnecting highways," he continued, "but they're lined with chain-link fencing. You can see there's more out there, but you can't get to it. The story goes that only someone with the Golden Power can veer off the crossroads into the uncharted territory beyond, where everything that is known, was known, or will be known exists simultaneously."
She frowned. "What does that mean?"
"The Golden Power grants omniscience."
The thoughts had stopped bubbling in her mind. In fact, her brain had gone utterly blank.
"Anyone capable of accessing that power," David said, "would know everything — past, present, and future. Can you imagine what someone like our mystery traveler would do with that knowledge?"
"I'd rather not imagine it."
A door slammed shut.
Glancing backward, Grace saw Earl had closed the restroom door and was heading back toward the checkout counter. When she looked back at David, she noticed the redness in his eyes. Strange how an incorporeal man could look so physically drained.
"You should go," she told him. "Rest up."
He gave her a pained look. "Not yet."
David said nothing as she yanked the flash drive out of the computer, tucking the little stick into her jeans pocket. She carried the laptop back to the counter, handed it to Earl, and thanked him for letting her use the computer. Of course, she'd paid him for the privilege, so it wasn't like he'd loaned it to her out of sheer kindness. But she felt bad about the restroom debacle. An exuberant thank-you seemed only polite under the circumstances.
Earl looked wary as he shook her hand. Maybe she'd gone a little overboard with the exuberance. There was a fine line between atonement and overcompensation.
When she glanced back at the table where she'd sat a moment earlier, David was gone. Her exuberance, feigned as it was, deflated. She trudged out to the car and settled in for the fifty-mile drive to wherever. Sean's directions, scrawled in dust, had simply told her to find Dry Lake Road and look for a dirt road on the left. He'd also warned her about "eyes and ears everywhere." He must've meant the invisible perimeter, delineated with sensors, that David mentioned.
How she'd get past the sensors, she didn't know. David was far too weak to help her now.
"You want to get inside the facility."
She yelped at the sound of his voice. Gasping, struggling to regain her composure, she cast an annoyed look at him. "Must you always do that?"
"Apparently."
He still looked weak and tired, almost sick. She reached out for him but her hand passed right through his illusory form. Fearing the answer, she asked, "Can you die from using too much psychic energy?"
"Probably." He managed a wan smile. "But don't worry, I'm not there yet."
"That might be more co
nvincing if you didn't look like — " Her throat constricted, choking off the words. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. She swallowed hard, blinked away the moisture, and steeled her voice. "I need you alive, so don't go dying on me."
"I need you alive too, but I've given up on keeping you away from the facility."
"Good."
"I know I can't stop you. So listen."
She let silence be her response.
"Dry Lake Road," he said, "is fifty miles the other side of town. Turn left there, drive several more miles, and look for a black mailbox at the end of a dirt road. Follow that road to an arroyo. If you sit there for thirty seconds, the weight of your car will trigger a device that raises a keypad from a pole in the ground." He closed his eyes, slumping forward. "Punch in the number 43709. Wait five seconds exactly. Then type in 000."
"Then what happens?"
His image rippled and winked out. Cold air blasted through the car, lashing her hair across her face. The air burst out of her lungs in one explosive gasp. She tried inhaling but her muscles froze, and it felt like someone was sucking the air out of her body through a straw. She huddled in the driver's seat, her mouth open so far her jaw ached. Her ears rang. Darkness invaded her vision.
Her ears popped.
She gulped air. Her vision cleared and her ears stopped ringing. She pulled in breath after breath, until her breathing normalized. The same thing had happened to her when the mystery traveler attacked her in her old car, the one the traveler had totaled. It must've had something to do with the confined space.
Digging in her purse, she found a scrap of paper — an old gas receipt was all she could find — and a pen. She jotted down the numbers David had told her. These days, she didn't trust her memory.
Driving straight into town, she took a detour off the main highway to find the post office. A sign posted on the main road had alerted her to the post office's location, two blocks off the highway. She pulled into one of three angled parking spaces in front of the small, dilapidated wood building. A faded sign identified the structure as the United States Postal Service of Reston, California. Inside the little building, she found a table loaded up with postal supplies and pens chained to the tabletop. She chose a priority mail envelope, tucked the flash drive inside it, and sealed the adhesive flap. Next, she scrawled her name and address in the appropriate box on the envelope. A few minutes later, she'd bought postage for the slim package and sent it on its way.
