Thirst No. 4

by Christopher Pike

  Cindy pales and I wonder if it’s due to the infection spreading in her system, or something else. “We’ve never done that before,” she says softly.

  “You’re not afraid of them, are you?”

  She hesitates. “I can meet that condition. For now let’s agree to work together to solve whatever other issues come up. You can hear when I speak the truth. You know I’m being sincere.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “Now my people need the vaccine.”

  “I’ll start injecting them in a minute.”

  “You must also guarantee we’ll get the permanent vaccine when the Telar are dead.”

  “As long as you agree not to steal my blood samples,” I say.

  “Agreed.”

  “You must also give me back my blood.”

  “I’ll have to gather it.”

  “And I want my friend’s sample back as well.”

  “Which friend is that?”

  “The one who shot Teri Raine on the mountain.”

  Brutran acts puzzled. I assume it’s an act. Yet, again, she appears to be telling the truth. “So it’s Teri who died. I didn’t know. She’s a celebrity. Why wasn’t it on the news?”

  “It will be. Don’t change the subject. I want the blood of the person who you mentally attacked on top of that mountain. Swear to me you’ll get it back.”

  Cindy is still hesitant. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Don’t start acting like you’re not in charge of this operation. You’re the queen bee. You have a finger on everything the IIC does. For that matter, I know it was you who planted a spy in our group.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I warn you, Brutran, don’t anger me. You know who it is.”

  “I don’t, I swear it.”

  God, she sounds like she’s telling the truth again.

  I try to act more confident than I feel. “Then you won’t mind if I use your Cradle to kill this mole,” I say.

  Cindy shrugs. “It’s your call.”

  SIXTEEN

  I’m still getting used to my old body. Now I have to get used to a new phase of life that’s so unpredictable and fraught with danger I can’t drop my guard for an instant. I’ve intentionally marooned myself in the heart of the IIC’s stronghold so I can destroy them, right after I destroy the Telar.

  But doubts assail me.

  Even Yaksha was unable to stop the Telar.

  I wish I shared the faith Umara has in me. It’s hard not to call upon her and Matt for help. I miss Seymour, his love and wisdom, and I miss Teri. I never had a chance to properly mourn her passing.

  I feel so alone caged inside the IIC’s headquarters.

  Yet it’s crucial I stay, and that I remain alone. If I brought in Umara and Matt, then all our cards would be on the table, and we’d be exposed to the IIC. And if something went wrong with my plan, we’d have no backup. Even if the IIC should happen to kill me, if Umara and Matt are still out there, alive, then at least there’s a chance the IIC and Telar can be stopped.

  I stay inside the Malibu center to keep an eye on everything the IIC does. Likewise, I force them to remain inside the building, all six hundred of the firm’s employees that I’ve infected. I convince them that they’re contagious, and they believe me. Why shouldn’t they? At this point, they know little about the virus. They have barely spoken to Charlie—I have given them limited access—who’s confident a person can’t spread the virus as long as the black blisters haven’t begun to pop and ooze their deadly fluid.

  I stay in the building for another reason. The IIC know me and know a portion of my history. For two decades they have fought the Telar. Now that they have me on their side, it’s strange but they see me as a leader of sorts. Not Cynthia and Thomas Brutran, but the rank-and-file members of the company. On the whole, they’re normal people, and I go out of my way to treat them with kindness and respect.

  I am, after all, their doctor, even if I’m the one who infected them. The simple act of giving them a shot every day that washes away their symptoms gives me a mysterious authority.

  But that doesn’t mean that other members of the IIC are not working behind my back at other facilities to try to develop a better vaccine. I’m alert enough to know there are scientists in our center who are sending out data on their computers to other IIC sites. That I cannot control, and I’m not even sure if I want to.

  Because I have two holds on the IIC, not one. They need me to stay healthy, and they need me because of the blood samples I carry. The blood Umara has so carefully gathered over the eons. My decision to infect the IIC was to get them moving quickly. But it’s the Telar blood that gives me my true control over them.

  Cynthia Brutran is still a mystery to me. She knows the danger X6X6 represents. She may crave power but she’s wise enough to know there has to be someone left alive on the planet to have power over. She should be doing everything she can to help me destroy the Telar.

  Yet, when it comes to the Cradle, she keeps stalling me.

  It’s like she’s afraid for me to meet the children. I’ve been at the Malibu center for three days and still only a trickle of the kids who make up the Cradle have arrived. I’ve met them, twenty teens and preteens, and they seem normal enough, although on the quiet side. But I suspect I haven’t met any of the kids who control the actual Lens.

  My patience with Brutran quickly runs out.

  On the fourth night, I tell her we’re going for a walk.

  We sneak out through a hidden exit Freddy has already alerted me to. It’s late, close to dawn, and the half moon has risen. It lights our way as we stroll along a path that leads through the hills behind the compound.

  “Why are you afraid to talk inside?” she asks.

  “Why are you? You act like every room has ears.”

  “That’s close to the truth. Security monitors every important area. They’ll know we’ve left the building.”

  “Don’t worry. You must know Harold in security? He and I have become good friends. He’s not going to talk about our great escape.”

  “I’ve noticed the two of you talking. For a vampire who’s brought nothing but disease, you’ve managed to develop quite a following.”

  “The rank and file don’t know I’m a vampire.” When I give the injections, I work fast but not at hyper speed. Nevertheless, the soldiers who broke into Brutran’s office have spread the rumor that I’m no ordinary woman. I don’t mind. I have gone out of the way to build their trust but a little fear can be a good thing.

  “They don’t think you’re human, either,” Cindy says.

  “But they like me more than they like you. Does that bother you?”

  “No.”

  “I think it does. It must get lonely working in a building where your nickname is the Wicked Witch.”

  “No one calls me that.”

  “Not to your face. You should have my ears. Do you want to hear some of your other nicknames?”

  Brutran acts bored. “You didn’t bring me out here to taunt me.”

  “True. I’m annoyed the Cradle’s not here. And don’t give me your usual excuses about their parents and the distances they have to travel and all that bullshit. You’re keeping them away for a reason, even though you know the Telar can strike at any time.”

  “I never agreed to bring the Cradle here.”

  “Liar. You never agreed to let me join them. You did agree to bring them to this building.”

  “I didn’t say those exact words.”

  “You gave the impression that bringing them here was not a problem. Now I’m through waiting. Why do you keep stalling?”

  “Give me the blood samples and we’ll kill the Telar for you. We’ll start immediately. You can oversee the operation. You can have access to all our surveillance equipment. You can’t imagine how sophisticated it is. We have a dozen satellites that can read a newspaper from orbit. You’ll be able to watch each target that we select die.
You can even tell us how you want them to die.”

  “No.”

  Brutran stops me in mid-stride. “There’s only one reason you would say no to my offer.”

  I don’t respond. I wait. She knows.

  “You don’t just intend to destroy the Telar. You intend to do the same to us.” She pauses. “Deny it.”

  “Why should I deny it? You’re dangerous.”

  Brutran sighs. “At last we’re able to speak the truth to one another. Why, from your perspective, is the IIC dangerous?”

  “Too much power concentrated among too few. You’re like the Nazis.”

  “Hitler was insane. Do you think I am?”

  “You have too much control. I was present when the founding fathers created this nation. There was a reason they split the government into three parts. The checks and balances were all designed to keep power-driven people from seizing absolute control.”

  Brutran is thoughtful. “How little you understand what’s really going on here.”

  Her remark sounds degrading but again I hear truth in it.

  “We’re alone. It’s just us girls. Enlighten me,” I say.

  Brutran continues walking. I follow.

  “To understand you’d have to go back to the beginning days of IIC. I know now that you’ve spoken to Professor Sharp and Freddy, and I assume they gave you a reasonably accurate idea of how the Array and the Cradle came into existence. At the same time, you have to understand their point of view is limited. They were always on the outside looking in.”

  “Because you’re the real founder of the company.”

  Brutran hesitates. “I thought so at the time. Freddy told you about the loss of our son. What he couldn’t tell you is how the pain refused to fade with the passage of time. I think I went a little crazy during those days. I knew Henry for only a week, but I talked to him in my head for years. And I had but one wish. That he would talk back to me.”

  I feel a disquieting chill. “I don’t understand.”

  Again, she stops me. “Before I go any further I need you to answer a question. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever asked of anyone. Please be honest with me.”

  “Ask.”

  “We know your small group battled the Telar in Colorado, outside the town of Goldsmith, and that you escaped the area in a helicopter by flying into the Rockies. We’re not sure what happened up there but our best information says that you were killed.” She pauses. “Is that true?”

  I’m silent a long time. Knowledge is power and I’m reluctant to tell this woman anything that could give her leverage over me or my friends.

  Yet I see the desperation in her eyes. The loss.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “You died?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you come back to life?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Alisa, please, this is important to me. What happened to you when you died?”

  I tell her a version of what happened.

  “I lost two days of memory. Then, when I began to experience the world around me again, I found myself floating near my body. Eventually that sensation passed and I was back inside it.”

  “And Teri Raine was dead. How did she die?”

  “It was in this morning’s news. She fell and broke her leg. The shattered bone ruptured her femoral artery.”

  “That must have been a hell of a fall. How did it happen?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. You’re leaving out a huge part of your story. You act like you were killed days before Teri.”

  “I was.”

  “How were you killed?”

  A note of bitterness enters my voice. “We’ve gone over this. Your Cradle possessed a friend of mine and forced him to shoot me in the heart.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s none of your business. Besides, you must know.”

  “I know nothing about this incident.”

  “Gimme a break.”

  “It’s true, and you know it’s true as I say it. How did you recover from the wound that killed you?”

  I shrug. “There are qualities to my vampiric blood even I don’t understand. The wound healed and I recovered.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Your own spy saw that I was dead. You can see I’m alive. What’s there to believe?”

  Brutran is suddenly emotional. The change in her is so unexpected I’m shocked. “What’s there to believe? Alisa, you of all people must know the questions that haunt us above all else. Is there life after death? Does the soul exist? Is my son still alive somewhere?”

  A mother’s grief over the loss of her child. Even the Wicked Witch is not immune to it. For the first time since I met the woman, I feel sympathy for her.

  “Krishna brought me back,” I say.

  “What?”

  “It was Krishna. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Brutran grabs my shoulders. “Did you see him when you died?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember what happened. I wish I could. You have no idea how I’ve struggled to fill in the blank of those days. But I can’t, they’re just empty.”

  “Then how can you say Krishna saved you?”

  “You just have to trust me.”

  “Trust you?” she shouts. “Now you sound like a Christian asking me to believe in the resurrection of Christ. I can’t believe something because someone tells me to believe it. Faith is for the foolhardy. Can’t you see that’s why I returned to experimenting with the array after I lost Henry?”

  The pieces of her story are finally beginning to fit together.

  “I thought you used it to make money,” I say.

  Brutran waves her hand impatiently and resumes walking. “I needed money to create a powerful array. So yes, in a sense, I focused on money to start with. But my ultimate goal was to find out what had happened to my son.”

  “Was this during the time Freddy was creating his scientific form of astrology?”

  Brutran snorts. “He came up with the idea. He didn’t create it all by himself.”

  “Explain.”

  “Freddy had his obsession, I had mine. We were both trying to drown our grief. Drugs and alcohol could only help so much. Once I had a new array up and running, and enough money to sustain it, I changed the focus of the work.”

  “You wanted to get it to talk,” I say.

  She glances over. “It seemed a natural next step. After all, you would have asked the same questions I did.”

  “Give me examples.”

  “Who are we talking to when we ask the array for information? Who or what is giving us insights into the market?”

  “You had grown weary of yes and no answers.”

  “Yes. I wanted more, a lot more.”

  “So how did you get it to talk?” I ask.

  “You might find this amusing. At first I split my two thousand kids into a thousand pairs and gave them each an Ouija board. Then I posed the simplest question of all: ‘Who are you?’ I allowed the answers to come just one letter at a time. It took discipline to stick with this program.”

  “Why?”

  “Because many of the messages coming through the Ouija boards were fascinating. The spirits we channeled would say they were guides or angels, and they would give us page after page of esoteric knowledge. Most of it was garbage but some of it was heartbreaking in its beauty and with its insights. Still, I forced myself to only keep track of the responses the group as a whole generated.”

  “You were sticking with Professor Sharp’s idea that ESP is basically a weak signal that can only be picked up by a large array of minds?”

  “Exactly. I couldn’t trust individual or paired responses. They had never been able to predict the market accurately. Why should I trust them to talk to me about spiritual matters?”

  “What answer did you get to your original question: ‘Who are you?’”

  “The answer was disconcerting. It said,
‘I am no one.’”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Not at first. Not for a long time. I tried switching our method of receiving the answers. I used applied kinesiology, or muscle testing. That’s where you have a subject stick out their arm, ask a question, and then test the arm for strength. Generally, if the arm is strong, the answer is yes, and if the arm goes weak, the answer is no. In many ways that worked better than the boards. I’d have each person start at the beginning of the alphabet and have another person keep checking them until their arm muscle went strong. Then I would write down that letter and repeat the process with everyone in the group.”

  “You did all that just to get one letter of one word?”

  “Yes. I know what you’re going to ask next. How many out of the two thousand would come up with the same letter? At first our results were dismal. We were lucky if any letter would stand out. But as we continued to work together, it was like a group mind formed and most of the kids started to get the same answer.”

  “Another amazing example of ESP.”

  “Yes. I thought Professor Sharp would have been proud of me.”

  “Were you in contact with him at the time?”

  “He was recovering from a stroke. But we spoke occasionally.”

  “Your work had nothing to do with his stroke?” I ask.

  “Don’t be silly, Alisa. The Cradle didn’t even exist at the time.”

  I ask my next question as gently as possible.

  “Were you able to contact your son?”

  The question still hits her hard. She takes a moment to recover. “It seemed, from time to time, that we would contact a kind spirit that said he was my son.”

  “Why do you say it was kind?”

  “It felt that way when he was in the room.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “That he was my son and that he was happy where he was.”

  “Did he give you any practical advice?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did he urge you to let go of your grief and get on with your life?”

  Cindy lowers her head. “I don’t recall every message that came through.”