The Astral Traveler's Daughter

by K. C. Archer

  To Teddy’s left, a mountain range loomed in the distance, its stony peaks rising somewhere across the Idaho border. To her right was nothing but stark desert plateau, interrupted only by an occasional scattering of large rock formations. Yates directed them due south and then east again, cutting across flat, miserable ground rife with prickly scrub brush and thorny cacti. Even if she’d wanted to, Teddy couldn’t have tracked their location. It just looked like the damn desert. The perfect breeding ground for snakes and other slithering creatures.

  Her combat boots proved to be more than an interesting fashion choice.

  Although it was still early morning, it was late August in Nevada. Which meant it was hot enough to burn a polar bear’s butt. They walked for over an hour, covering what Teddy calculated must have been almost three miles. Three miles into the middle of the desert. Though Yates looked worse for wear, he moved with lithe, effortless grace. In contrast to Teddy—out of shape after a summer spent sitting on the floor of a dusty apartment reading newspaper articles—who struggled to keep up in the heat.

  “Remind me why we didn’t take Pyro’s truck?” Jillian asked, straggling behind.

  “Because I’d prefer not to announce our presence to everyone within fifty miles,” Yates replied, gathering the group behind the shelter of a dense desert sumac. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here.”

  He lifted his chin, directing their attention to a primitive wooden structure draped with camouflage netting. Two armed guards, dressed in regulation tan fatigues, stood on opposite sides of a secured gate that allowed vehicle access. The facility was surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence, topped with ribbons of razor wire. Caged within the fence was the sort of basic no-frills complex common to military bases and prisons. Ugly two-story structures distinguished only by their state of disrepair. Buildings that appeared to have been hastily constructed, then abandoned and subsequently beaten down by the intense desert heat. Apart from the guards, there was no sign of life anywhere. Earlier, they’d heard vehicles. Trucks rumbling across the desert landscape. But now, nothing.

  “Sector One,” Yates announced. “Or what’s left of it.”

  “Looks deserted to me,” Pyro said.

  Teddy shook her head. “Then why are there guards?”

  “Maybe they’re using it as a storage facility or something,” Dara said.

  “We should find out.” Pyro rubbed his fingers against his thumb, then held them against a brittle weed, clearly intent on starting a small brush fire. “I’ll create a distraction. Then we’ll slip inside.”

  Yates knocked Pyro’s hand away from the smoldering twig. “So dramatic. So unnecessary.”

  “What would you suggest?” Pyro said, lip curled.

  Yates turned his attention to the guard station. If Teddy hadn’t known to watch for it, she would have missed it. The hard look on Yates’s face, the brightness in his eyes . . . Seconds later, a dull thud, then another, as the two guards fell to the ground, guns scattering.

  Jillian gasped. “What did you do to them?”

  “It’s only temporary,” Yates said. He took a step out from behind the overgrown sumac. “Follow me.”

  They crossed a barren field and strode through the entrance, past the unconscious guards. Teddy had seen mental influence before, but the ability to knock someone out cold with just force of mind? She shuddered. And sent another surge of power to her mental shield.

  Teddy remembered Clint telling her that Sector One had been an army training facility, a base used to prepare troops for the conditions they’d encounter once deployed to Desert Storm. But as she and her friends made their way deeper inside the base, nothing she saw gave any indication of the facility’s more sinister purpose. She peered inside one of the ravaged buildings, desperate for a glimpse of what had happened there. To see firsthand what her parents and the other psychics had endured. But all she could make out were abandoned desks and chairs, assorted dirt and debris.

  “We’re missing something,” Dara said. She turned to Yates. “The government wouldn’t conduct secret experiments where anyone could see what they were doing, right? The facility would have been hidden. Entry allowed only with high-security clearance.”

  “Very astute, Ms. Jones.” Yates surveyed the dilapidated structures surrounding them. From Teddy’s perspective, they all looked the same, but he zeroed in on one and moved toward it. He identified a spot on its exterior wall and kicked aside some sagebrush. As he did, another sage grouse scurried free.

  Yates pointed to the ground beneath the overgrowth. A padlocked metal double door, sunk low into the ground. Similar to the exterior Bilco doors that allowed access to basements. Yates bent and brushed away the sandy soil coating the metal surface. Though the design was rusted through in places, Teddy could make out the pattern etched on the surface: a number three surrounded by three overlapping concentric circles. Just like the screw she’d seen in Clint’s office. The symbol on her parents’ jackets in the photograph she had in her pocket. The symbol Jillian had seen in her vision.

  The symbol for Sector Three.

  Teddy bent down, grabbed the padlock, and tugged, but it wouldn’t budge. Not a problem. She’d broken through a metal door before. She could do this. She stood up, centered her breath, readied herself to use her telekinesis to break through. Pyro stopped her. “Don’t,” he said. “Save your energy.” He looked toward Yates. “Just in case.”

  Pyro stepped past her and rubbed his hands together, generating heat. Then he pressed his palms against the surface. He focused his gaze on the thick metal padlock. Within seconds, the lock began to glow red, then white, as the heat built. Tiny sparks shot from his hands. Like watching a smelter pull something out of a fire, only Pyro manipulated the metal with his bare hands. At last the lock began to warp and twist, breaking away before their eyes. Pyro removed his hands, put them in his pockets.

  Teddy cautiously felt the metal door. It was still warm. “That’s amazing,” she said.

  “Just something I’ve been working on.” He smiled.

  “We done?” Yates said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

  Ignoring him, Teddy gave Pyro’s arm a quick squeeze and pulled open the Bilco door. She peered down into a black, gaping hole. A sheer drop of at least two stories, maybe more. Bottom line: even if they survived the fall unscathed, they’d never get out. She wheeled around to glare at Yates.

  “Fire exit,” he said. “They’re not expecting us, so I thought it prudent not to use the front door.”

  “How are we supposed to—”

  “Patience, Theodora.” With that, he removed the length of rope he’d carried in and secured it around the base of a charred stump. “I’ll go first.”

  He grasped the rope in his hands and centered himself over the open Bilco doors. Gave a light jump and rappelled down the interior of the shaft, disappearing into the waiting darkness.

  Pyro peered into the hole, then back at Teddy. “You sure about this?”

  “I have to know.”

  The rope snapped taut.

  “All right, then. It’s clear.”

  Teddy grasped the rope and turned around, centered herself over the hole. Using the same technique Yates had employed, she began her descent. Once her feet reached solid ground, she gave the rope a snap and stepped back, signaling her friends. She waited beside Yates in the gloom of a narrow corridor, neither of them speaking. It was dark inside but not totally black, which Teddy found interesting. Light seeped in from connecting passageways. She allowed herself a second to wonder if partial electricity had been recently restored, or if no one had ever bothered to disconnect the secret government facility from the grid.

  Not that there was much to see. Teddy could make out a few details of their surroundings: narrow hallways, linoleum floors, caged bulbs overhead. No sound except the steady hum of machinery operating in the distance—a generator, she guessed. The air smelled acrid, as though she were detecting a faint residue of smoke, and it felt hot
and dry against her skin.

  Dara rappelled down to join them, then Jillian. Pyro brought up the rear. Once they’d assembled, Yates shouldered past Teddy. “This way,” he whispered. “Stay together.”

  He led them through the long, dim passageways. Every so often, the hallway splintered, forking into another offshoot. Teddy tried to keep count of the pattern of lefts and rights, but as they made their way deeper into the belly of Sector Three, she lost track of the route. She’d go crazy down here, she knew that for certain. Like a rat trapped in a maze.

  As they walked, she noted wooden crates whose labels indicated food, water, clothing, and cleaning and medicinal supplies stacked neatly against the walls. Evidence of future occupation, she supposed. But by whom? As far as she could tell, none of the crates had been opened.

  Eventually, they came to a single metal door. For the first time since they’d entered Sector Three, Yates hesitated. Shadows played over his face, making his naturally stark features even more grim. He gave a terse nod and opened the door. “I believe this is what you wanted to see, Theodora.”

  Teddy stepped through the doorway, squinting. She sensed that she was in a relatively large room, but it was too dark to make out any details. She ran her hand over the rough surface of the wall until she made contact with a switch. She flicked it on.

  A dim overhead bulb sputtered to life. Some sort of operating room, she surmised. Two broken metal gurneys rested on their side. Shattered medicine bottles, thick leather hospital restraint cuffs, and twisted surgical tools littered the ground, accompanied by syringes, scalpels, and assorted medical equipment. Clearly, the space hadn’t been touched since whatever had happened here. The walls were charred black and pockmarked with bullet holes.

  Though the room was destroyed, its use was evident. But if the rumors about Sector Three were true, the type of medical procedure that had occurred there belonged more in a horror movie than in a hospital. She looked at Yates.

  He returned her gaze. “In your worst nightmare, you couldn’t imagine.”

  The problem was, she could. Only then did she realize how tightly she was clenching her fists. Squeezing so hard, her fingers had turned numb. She shook them loose, then stuffed her hands into her pockets. Her fingers grazed her mother’s necklace. She wrapped her hand around it. The stone felt cool in her palm, comforting.

  “Tell me what happened here,” she said to Yates.

  “I would think that’s obvious, Theodora.” He moved away from her, ran a finger along the twisted metal door of a medicine cabinet. “Certain people wanted to know how psychics . . . worked.”

  “The government, you mean?”

  “Initially.”

  “What about the PC?”

  “The PC was formed after we left Sector Three . . .” He trailed off as he studied a bullet hole in the wall, then turned back to face Teddy. “Imagine it: the kind of research the government conducted—if you could call it that—in the hands of my former organization, untethered by law or accountability.”

  “If the PC was so bad, why did you stay so long?” Dara challenged.

  Something flared in Yates’s eyes. “They had ways to make us cooperate.”

  “Meaning?”

  Yates ignored Dara’s question. Looked at Teddy. “The things I saw Marysue do with that necklace . . . Teddy, if you could harness that power? You’d could be unstoppable. It could change everything.”

  He looked as though he wanted to say more, but an echo of distant voices suddenly drifted toward them. Pyro reached for the light switch and flicked it off. They froze in the darkness, listening to the noise recede. Whoever had been there was moving away. A lucky break.

  As they waited for the silence to become complete again, Teddy became aware of the stone in her hand. She rubbed her thumb across the pendant and found it no longer cool but burning hot. She tried to release her grip but couldn’t. She opened her mouth—to alert her friends, to ask for help—but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t catch her breath. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.

  Then she felt a sharp tug, as though an invisible hook had latched underneath her rib cage, dragging her somewhere she didn’t want to go. Panic flooded her. She wanted to scream, because how was this happening and how did she stop it, and then everything went dark. Not just dark but a bottomless blackness. And then she was in pain. Like her head was in a vice. Like she was simultaneously being thrown from a great height and squeezed through an invisible tunnel the size of a drinking straw.

  She may have lost consciousness—she wasn’t sure—but when she opened her eyes, she could breathe again, and the pain was gone. She was still deep within the bunker of Sector Three . . . and yet it wasn’t the same place she’d been moments ago. The walls were gleaming white and brightly lit. The medical equipment was neatly displayed, and the metal gurneys shone. She was alone.

  No sign of Yates or her friends.

  What kind of trick is this?

  A trick. Yes. Yates. He’d been looking at her, talking to her. He must have gotten inside her head. Was he trying to show her what had happened in the past? Was she in his memory?

  A nurse stepped into the room and strode right past her to collect supplies, as if she couldn’t see Teddy at all. A memory, then, if she can’t see me. But if that’s true, where is Yates?

  A sound echoed from the hallway—the squeak of wheels and a male voice saying something about “the next subject.”

  “He put up a hell of a fight,” a second voice responded. “But he’s out cold now.”

  Two orderlies pushed a gurney into the operating room. Lying atop it was a man. His hair, dirty and streaked with gray, was damp with sweat and hung limply across his forehead. As she studied him further, Teddy took in other details—the thick leather straps at his ankles and his wrists. The ligature marks up and down his arms (this obviously wasn’t the first time he’d been bound).

  The man looked up, looked right through her. She could see him, but he couldn’t see her. His skin was sallow, even under the harsh lights. And his face—bloodshot eyes encased by dark circles, sunken cheeks—ravaged but familiar. She knew the man before her.

  Richard Delaney. Her father.

  She staggered backward, overcome. Bile rose in the back of her throat. Although only two years had passed since Richard had posed with Clint, Yates, and Marysue for the photo Teddy carried, he looked as though he’d aged decades. The click of a lever, and the lights in the room surged and flickered. Her father’s hands gripped the metal arms of the chair, forearms straining against the bindings. As the electricity surged, he cried out. She felt the noise inside her, felt the vibrations burn in her own chest.

  She couldn’t watch this happen. She backed up, desperately edging away from the scene unfolding before her. She’d barely made it out the door when she heard footsteps racing down the hallway.

  “What have you done to him?” the woman shouted, her voice hoarse with terror. She flung herself onto one of the orderlies. “Where is he?”

  The orderly caught the woman’s fists and spun her around, away from the operating room. In that instant, Teddy saw her face.

  A face she recognized—her mother’s.

  From within the operating room, another agonized cry, followed by a surge of electricity that caused the hallway to go blindingly bright. Teddy had barely had time to shield her eyes when a second scream echoed through the corridors, and then, with a pop, the hanging lightbulbs exploded, raining shards of glass. One razorlike sliver pierced the skin on Teddy’s right index finger. She was bleeding.

  She refocused on the scene before her to see one of the orderlies dragging her mother away. An alarm sounded. Before Teddy could identify the source of the piercing whine, the pain was back, pulsing behind her eyes, worse than any migraine imaginable. The hallway tilted sideways, and Teddy felt her knees give. She reached out, trying to grab hold of something to stop her fall, but she was too late. The room spun, and once again she plunged into bottoml
ess blackness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TEDDY WOKE WITH A JERK, out cold on the floor. A piercing alarm screaming down the hallway and Pyro’s hand supporting her head. “It’s all right, Teddy. You’re okay. But we have to get out of here.”

  She blinked as Pyro’s face swam into focus. She was back in the bunker, surrounded by her friends and the ravaged remains of the medical room. “What? Pyro? Where—Yates—”

  “Yates is gone,” Dara said, her expression strained. “You passed out. You have to get up now.”

  Teddy glanced down at her right index finger, where the glass shard had pierced her skin. She touched it, then looked at her hand, the blood still tacky. But there was no evidence of broken glass anywhere. It didn’t make sense. How could she be injured if she’d been inside Yates’s memory?

  “Someone’s coming,” Jillian hissed from the doorway. “We have to hurry.”

  Pyro tucked his arm beneath Teddy and brought her to her feet. She swayed. “Can you run?” he asked.

  “Run? What—”

  “The guards Yates knocked out must have woken up and called in reinforcements.” Anger darkened his gaze. “Yates bailed on us the second the alarm sounded.”

  Teddy shook her head, struggling to make sense of what her friends were saying. Yates had abandoned them. He’d led them inside Sector Three but hadn’t stuck around to get them out. Typical. She should have known better.

  She shoved aside the horror of what she’d seen in Yates’s memory. She’d deal with that later. First they had to get off the base.

  They shrank back against the wall as an armed guard raced down the hallway, past the operating room. Teddy braced herself for more, but none came. After a beat, Dara checked the corridor and gave the all clear. They ran opposite the direction the guards had taken, sweeping left and then right through the narrow hallways, relying on Pyro’s sense of recall to bring them back to the Bilco doors. They stalled at a T intersection.

  “What now?” Teddy asked.

  “The air’s different,” Pyro said. “I feel the heat coming in. We must be near the exit.”