“Even if I could influence Fortski, the guy is kind of a weakling,” I said. I began to realize how absurd this all looked right now: two floating “ghosts” hovering above John Fortski talking about his bravery (or anything else for that matter). I felt like I was in a dream.
“He’s the one who has the formula. If Elisha finds out she’ll be the only one to have it. We can’t let that happen.” Max was very determined. “We have to hide it, so we can come back and retrieve it later when the rescue crew comes.”
“Assuming that a rescue crew is coming,” I grumbled.
“It’s our only chance. If Elisha finds out about the formula we’ll never see it and we’ll both die.” Max was certain.
I nodded and looked at Fortski. “Jump in together?” I asked. I had no idea how this was going to work.
Max nodded.
The two of us kept our hands clasped and we swooped into John Fortski’s body.
Like the other times I visited people’s brains, we were immediately in what I call the memory area. Apparently, the way I visualize peoples’ memories was long hallways with millions of doors. Everyone sees it differently, but since I was probably more familiar with this whole process than Max, we both saw it my way. Fortski’s memory doors were a lot like Roberta’s, on and on forever. Age, I guess: the older you were the more memories you had. I was a little curious to peek in a few and maybe get some more info on Elisha, but first things first…
“How do we influence him?” I asked.
“I thought you would know,” Max admitted.
I felt like a complete bumbling idiot. While my body was being ripped to shreds by Elisha, I was in John Fortski’s head trying to figure out how to influence him like a puppet.
Maybe if I thought of his body the way I thought of controlling dead things.
It was so easy to take over the dead because I could focus on their swirling black holes and connect to them. They were like an extension of me. So, maybe, I just had to do the same thing here. Fortski didn’t have a swirling black hole, since he wasn’t dead, but he had a brain. A brain that told him how to move. I just needed to connect to that part of his mind. I concentrated as hard as I could, focusing on movement. I closed my eyes.
I could see something.
But it wasn’t his brain.
It was his swirling bright light.
I looked up at Max in alarm.
How?
Just like with the twins, I could see Fortski’s spinning white center. His life!
I realized I could only see it from the inside. I didn’t have their power to see every living thing as swirling light. But inside Forstki, I was seeing his. I had no idea why. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the twins were the reason I had my powers in the first place. I wasn’t sure.
“Max…” I said in wonder.
“What is it?” His curiosity was piqued.
“Watch.”
Fortski was mine.
I connected to Fortski’s swirling light and a surge of power flowed through me. Intoxicating. I tried to keep my euphoric state from distracting me as I realized that I could actually see out of Fortski’s eyes.
Once I took over his every move, I hadn’t noticed that I had made Fortski stand perfectly still. Not conspicuous at all.
I made him put down his beaker and walk over to the bathroom.
Max’s voice echoed in my head, but I couldn’t see him anymore, I could only see what Fortski saw. “You’re controlling him!” He was obviously shocked and pleased at once. “How?!”
“I can see his light like when I controlled the twins. It feels like it does when we connect to the dead, but stronger because he’s alive,” I tried to explain.
I could hear Max’s sigh of awe.
“Max, do you know where he keeps the sample formula?”
“Inside his leg. He had a pouch of skin surgically added to his right inner thigh.”
Gross.
But I had to give it to the guy, inventive.
“All right, eww, but once I have it, where should I hide it?”
Max apparently had thought about this. “You’re going to have to leave the building. Fortski isn’t allowed off campus, but he is allowed in the courtyard. We can bury it out there.”
“If we can get my grandparents to rescue us, then why wouldn’t we just take it off Fortski then? Why hide it when we can get it from him directly?” This whole plan was starting to sound fishy. Why couldn’t we just take it from Fortski later? It’s not like he was going anywhere.
“Because Elisha is going to kill him tonight,” Max said calmly.
I, on the other hand, was not so calm.
“What?! Why would she do that? This guy is a genius and probably has like a million other drug inventions in him!” I was appalled. Someone like Elisha would know better. I hated to say it, but think of all the things she could make this guy invent.
“That’s exactly why she’s going to kill him. She can’t allow this guy to exist.” Max sounded like he was spouting a prophecy. “He’s too much of a commodity and Elisha knows it’s only a matter of time before Turner gets Fortski back. She can’t have Fortski giving Turner the drug that could potentially make him invulnerable. It’s worth killing off the possibilities of Fortski’s talent than to give her biggest enemy her greatest asset.”
Damn that girl was horrible.
“Does Fortski know?” I asked.
“He’s suspects, which is why he’s keeping the sample hidden. He’s going to use it on himself if she hurts him. Fortski told her he’d have a prototype ready tonight. Once she has it, that’s when she plans on killing him,” Max said.
“How do you know all this?” I wondered.
“After I slipped into a coma, I came here. I’m still connected to Eva and Elisha. I watched as Elisha almost beat Eva to death like she did to me. Elisha kept saying Eva needed to be punished, but as soon as Fortski had the prototype, she’d try it out on Eva. Eva is so obsessed with Elisha. She is actually proud and grateful to be the guinea pig.” I could hear the bitterness in Max’s voice.
“Shouldn’t we be more worried about saving Fortski’s life than this stupid formula?” Thought I’d throw that out there.
“Normally, I’d say yes, and if we can save Fortski, I’m with you, we should. But this formula makes Elisha nearly invincible. She can not have it.” Max was adamant.
“Okay, I’ll make him bury it. But I’m going to do everything in my power to save him. I’m not going to let Elisha kill one more innocent person,” I said with as much conviction as humanly possible.
I re-focused on controlling Fortski. First I made sure that his memories were locked from him by closing all the doors that were opening from his newest memories. Then I made him leave the bathroom and Max guided Fortski/me outside to the courtyard.
Seeing through Fortski’s eyes was strange. It felt almost blurry, but in fact everything was in perfect focus. I tried not to think about it too much, though, or it would give me a panic attack.
We reached the courtyard, which looked as if it had been there a while. Ivy and bougainvillea grew up the sides of the stone walls that were at least twenty feet high. A broken, multi-layered fountain dominated the center, moss growing all over it. It was like a scene out of fantasy book, except this place was a prison. Walking over the slick cobblestone floor made me paranoid that I would make Fortski slip and break his neck. And I noticed that there were no other doors leading out, just the one we had come in through.
“Go towards the back,” Max suggested. “We’ll bury it under a stone.”
I made Fortski look around, making sure no one else was in the courtyard and that there were no cameras. Then I had him walk to the very back of the small space. I almost wanted to close my eyes when I had to make Fortski pull down his pants so I could grab the formula. Embarrassing.
And seriously gross. I felt around his right inner thigh until I found the piece of loose skin and peeled it back. Blek. There in his secret h
iding place was a small vial full of a clear liquid. I wasn’t sure how this stuff worked, but just because I wanted to make Fortski as safe as possible, I made him drink a few drops.
Max didn’t argue. He knew I had to at least try and give Fortski a fighting chance. I was burying his only cure after all. I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
I stoppered the vial and pulled back a loose cobblestone. There was thick mud underneath, so I grabbed a nearby stick and dug a small hole. Placing the vial inside, I packed the dirt on top, then had Fortski place the stone in its original place.
Done.
“Let’s put him back in the lab and get over to your grandparents.” Max was all business.
I made Fortski return to the lab and I left him exactly as we found him. I closed the doors on all of his memories for the last five minutes, so hopefully he wouldn’t skip a beat.
Keeping my grip on Max’s hand, I let go of Fortski’s spinning white hole and Max and I flew out of Fortski’s body.
Fortski had a moment of confusion on his face, a bit disoriented, but he shook it off and went back to his experiments.
“All right let’s get out of here and get some help,” I said to Max.
SWOOSH!
Before I could react I was ripped from Max’s grasp and being sucked out of the room.
SLAM!
I screamed.
I was back in my body.
Elisha was glowing with pride. “Tricky, tricky. I knew I should have snagged Roberta, very clever of her pulling you out, but I’m smarter than the both of you combined and it won’t happen again.”
More cuts had been made since I last visited my wrecked body. I began to sob from the sheer agony of it. I’d never felt so much pain in my life. I couldn’t even revel in the fact that Elisha thought it had been my grandmother who pulled me out and not Max. Max hadn’t even entered her mind since she believed he was dead.
SLASH!
I bit my lip to hold back a scream and tasted blood in my mouth. Elisha had just cut my side, long and deep. Eva could barely keep up with the pain-inducing salve as blood pooled beneath me on the cement floor. I wanted out of this body. I couldn’t stand another minute. Max! Help me!
I searched the room for him, but he wasn’t there. Had Elisha inadvertently separated us forever? Or had she performed some kind of mojo that prevented me from leaving my body again? I tried to leave myself, even if just for a second before she’d pull me back. Just one second of bliss. I tried as hard as I could, but I was stuck in my broken body.
That’s when I started to seethe. I had never felt such rage in my entire life. I wanted to destroy Elisha. I wanted her to die. I couldn’t even fathom how I ever argued for her survival. She didn’t deserve it. She deserved to suffer. The more she cut me, the more I wanted to destroy her. My expression must have been screaming how I felt, because Elisha actually took a step back when our eyes met.
Then just as quickly, her face lit up in pure ecstasy.
Elisha took pleasure from hatred.
She was evil.
Pure evil.
I saw black.
Blacker than I’d ever seen before.
Elisha and Eva’s bodies were covered in it, like a thick skin of tar. It took only a second to realize it was their dead skin cells that hadn’t flaked off their bodies yet.
And I acted.
I connected to every last dead skin cell on Elisha’s body and I made them burrow into her skin. Digging. Digging. Digging.
Elisha screamed in utter terror and pain. It was music to my ears.
Eva was in shock. She had no idea what was happening.
Deeper and deeper I made the dead cells burrow into Elisha’s body. Her screaming grew louder and more intense. I loved it. I loved every second of her pain. It somehow lessened mine.
“Knock her out!” Elisha yowled at Eva.
Eva was completely freaked out. She grabbed a metal pipe and started towards me.
I burrowed Eva’s dead skin cells into her living skin and watched as she dropped the pipe to grab her arms and legs in agonizing pain.
They were screaming and I wanted to laugh. I wanted to sing!
SWOOSH!
I was out of my body. Max was holding onto my hands and pulling me away.
Elisha and Eva stopped screaming.
I tried to pull away from Max. I wanted back in and I wanted them to suffer!
Max held on tight. “Chelsan, stop! This isn’t you!”
“It is me! I’m tired of being hunted and tortured. I have to make it stop! I have to make Elisha stop!” I tried to tug away from Max, but he was too strong.
That’s when he pulled me into him. Even though we were bodiless I could feel his arms wrap around me, holding me tight. He whispered in my ear, “Chelsan, she’s trying to turn you into her. Fight it. You’re better than this.”
And then I heard him.
Really heard him.
She’s trying to turn you into her.
And, for a brief moment, Elisha had succeeded.
I had become as bad as she ever was.
I slumped into Max.
What was I doing?
What had I done?
I started to cry. Really cry. Ugly cry. Thank goodness I was a ghost.
“We have to get out of here, she’ll recover soon and pull you back in,” Max whispered in my ear.
I nodded into his chest. I wanted to fly as far away from this place as possible. I couldn’t even look at myself I was so ashamed. I had let my anger get the best of me. I kept a tight hold on Max’s hand as I pulled away from our embrace. “You lead.”
Max nodded and the two of us soared outside of the building until we were hovering over it.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“About fifty miles outside of Los Angeles, near Castaic Lake,” Max informed me.
If I wasn’t so pre-occupied with my horrible behavior, I would have appreciated the scenery. Beautiful pines over rolling hills, all framing a deep blue lake. In other words, the middle of nowhere.
I searched the billions of strands of light that spread out before me like a network of spider webs until I found the brightest and strongest of them all. Roberta’s. “Found Grams, hang on,” I told Max as I led him toward Roberta at full speed.
It only took a matter of seconds. Astral projection is the best way to travel! I brought Max in with me for fear of letting go and being sucked back into my body.
Darkness surrounded us, but only for a brief second. Roberta materialized in front of us, creating our oak forest for scenery. From the expression on her face she seemed surprised to see Max, but she wasn’t upset. Grams hurried over and hugged me close. When she realized I wasn’t letting go of Max’s hand, she pulled away. “Where are you and what’s wrong?” she asked.
When I saw Roberta’s concern something inside of me snapped. I didn’t want to admit what I’d done to Elisha and Eva. To tell her would be to acknowledge that I had actually become... like my grandparents. Even in my incorporeal form I felt like vomiting. But she had to know, so I told Roberta everything. By the end of it, I was choking back tears.
Grams gently touched my cheek with her hand. “They deserved it. Don’t feel guilty for a second.”
I know she was trying to make me feel better, but it actually made me feel worse. Getting any stamp of approval by psycho-Grams wasn’t exactly what I needed right now. Still, I knew she was trying to make me feel better, so I shrugged it off.
“Now where are you, Chelsan?”
“I’m in a building near Lake Castaic on the south western shore. Fortski is there, too – and Elisha plans to kill him tonight,” I told her.
Roberta was genuinely taken aback by this last piece of information. “Kill Fortski? What on earth for?” she asked, trying to process Elisha’s warped reasoning. But, Roberta didn’t know the full story, so I told her about the prototype serum.
Roberta’s eyes lit up. She might as well have been salivating. This st
uff really was dangerous.
“We need to get it so we can save Max,” I kept her focused.
“And you,” Max added, looking at me.
He turned to Roberta, “Chelsan’s body is more injured than she led you to believe. Almost every inch has been cut and salved with burning acid.”
Was that what it was? Acid? Even though I was safe in Roberta’s head, I could almost feel the pain, the memory was so fresh. I hadn’t gone into huge detail as to how extensively Elisha had tortured me, but Max apparently wanted Roberta to know.
Grams took a second to recover from the news, then her eyes became so intensely furious I was grateful she didn’t want me dead anymore. Nope. If her eyes said anything, they said she was going to kill Elisha.
Before she could fly off the handle, I told her what Elisha told me about why she was torturing me.
This made Grams very interested. “So, she doesn’t have all your powers… That’s good. That means that, no matter what, you’ll always be more powerful than Elisha and that you have a few tricks that she doesn’t. And controlling Fortski? That’s something we should study further.” She was very impressed.
“I don’t feel more powerful than Elisha,” I admitted.
“Chelsan, you made her own dead skin cells burrow into her body. Trust me, if she could do that, she would have done it by now. Elisha loves to hurt people, really hurt people.”
“Maybe she hadn’t thought of it yet?” I offered.
“No,” Roberta was definitive. “The fact that she’s using mundane items like knifes and salves means Elisha can’t harness her power like you can. That’s a good thing. She still has her astral skills, which allows her to pull you back into your body, but Max was pretty brilliant holding on to you like this.” Roberta gave Max a slight nod of respect. “He’s a human tether and she doesn’t know how to break it.”
If Max could blush he would have, but instead he addressed Roberta, “Am I going to live long enough to take Fortski’s serum?”
Roberta didn’t respond right away, which rattled me. Then she answered, “If we get there in the next few hours, yes, I think there will be enough time.” Grams touched Max’s arm with genuine affection. “Being outside your body is making you weaker. An hour ago we thought you were taking a turn for the worse. Now I know it’s because you were saving my granddaughter.” Roberta stepped forward, eye to eye with Max. “I promise you I will make sure you live. Even if your body dies I can perform a ritual to place you in another body until we can have a clone made for you. I will not let Elisha win.”
The Riser Saga Page 84
