Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy)

by Thea Atkinson

  Her words came out wet. "Lobotomy," she said.

  He swore beneath his breath. "They don't have to do that," he said. His palms went on the inside of her face, twisting it this way and that, inspecting. "Did they?"

  She shook her head, trying to find the right words.

  "I'd like to see the other guy," he said, trying for humor, but his voice was choked up. She knew then she must look a mess. More than a mess. She must look frightening.

  "Help me," she started.

  "Of course." He put his arms around her and struggled to help her stand. When she was on weak legs, he supported her. "I know a place," he said. "It's not much, a storage closet no one uses anymore, but you'll be safe. At least for now."

  She felt along the walls as they went, watching through slit eyes the early dawn trying to rake a path through a series of triple paned windows. Down a pedway of sorts, over a parking lot, stumbling along 'til finally, there was a door. Half ajar and stinking of chemicals, but dark inside. Cobwebs brushed her face as she pushed in.

  No god, but luck, at least. Luck gave her much more than a closet. A large room where they stored urine stained mattresses and old boxes of files. It was musty and stank of wet paper, there was even a hint of smoke, as though the papers had caught flame at one point, but Theda didn't care. She sank against the wall as her savior went about creating a wall of boxes she could hide behind. He yanked at a mattress that lay on its side. She eyed it with some trepidation. It fell flat with a waft of dust and the stench of urine.

  She knew she was about to collapse, and she'd rather it was on a musty mattress than tile. It stank and it was damp, but she didn't care.

  "Are you real?" she said, eyeing him.

  He helped her onto the mattress, where she sat cross legged and leaned against the wall.

  "I don't know what they did to you," he said. "But I'm not about to let them do it again."

  "Then get me out of here."

  He shook his head. "I can't. Not yet"

  "I don't feel so well," she said.

  "Here," he said, pulling off his shirt. "It's not much, but it might help keep you warm. I need to get back to my rounds, but I'll come back for you when I can."

  The stress was already getting to her. She couldn't focus any longer. Her tongue felt thick and her muscles refused to work anymore. She collapsed onto her side, pulling her knees in. She had the vague sensation of his weight leaving the mattress, of him shuffling across the floor to the door. A word occurred to her, one that seemed important and she struggled to form it.

  "Ezekiel," she mumbled, but she couldn't get any more than that out.

  She was sweating and freezing all at the same time.

  Losing her soul, that's what it felt like; if she had to describe the sense of lying there, her face swollen and hurting, throat clogged up and making it tough to breathe, with the eerie sense that the darkness harbored a sinister essence that was robbing her of her spirit. She almost felt herself lifting up out of her body, that if she opened her eyes, she'd see herself curled on the stinking mattress, shivering from the cold wet gown that tangled in her legs. Except her eyes wouldn't open; one was too swollen and the other was gummed shut with what she suspected was seepage. The lab. It had to be. They'd exposed her to something hideous and infectious in that room and here she was sweating and shivering herself senseless because they were bigots, all of them. Treating her as though she was an animal, a test rat to poke and prod, questing for answers that they already knew. Pretending they were worried about her well-being, when all along they were exposing her to something insidious. Safe. That's what Ezekiel had said. But like all of his notions of safety, it was more dangerous than the alternative.

  It was only the sheer ache in her bones that kept her grounded in her body.

  To think, she'd managed to escape their re-education tactics, just to die here, alone, in a broom closet filled with the stench of her own urine and sweat. What she wouldn't give for a smear. It would fix everything. She wouldn't have to feel the tremors, the cramps, the way her face burned. She'd let it hush her to a quiet sleep, murmur to her muscles, croon to her psyche until nothing was left but the somber darkness of bliss. It was the only true thing about her life, after all. The only thing she could count on. The only real protector from the evils that lurked in the darkness and romped about in the light.

  The godspit was the answer. Not Ami. Not Ezekiel. Not even her mother, long ascended and in her own damned state of bliss, leaving her behind to this hell on earth.

  "Not truly left behind, Theda."

  "Abandoned, then," she murmured. "You abandoned me here." Theda expected to feel grief at the sound of her own voice, speaking aloud the horror. She felt nothing. The damned bastards had stolen her emotions, so overloaded her adrenal glands with fear, so compromised her immunities with whatever virus they'd pumped into the room that she couldn't even mourn the sound of her mother's voice. Couldn't feel relief at the sight of the honey hair haloed about the Nordic face.

  "You left me," she said to the ghostly visage. "HE came, and you left."

  "It wasn't like that and you know it." The whisper, the fragrance of her mother's breath was so acutely there, Theda could swear the air was scented with licorice, with the hush of air against her ear.

  Something in her chest squeezed. She was wrong; there was emotion after all: rage. Rage so acute, it did lift her straight out of her body and she could look down on its fetal-position on the mattress, and she could see how hollow her body was inside.

  "Look at it," she said. "It's a mess." She took in the swollen cheeks, the way the bruising from the doctor's beating shadowed her temple and she wanted to clean away the blood and snot that had accumulated beneath her nose. It reminded her of a time far in her past when she'd seen a look very much like it in a mirror.

  "You abandoned me then, too," she said, and thought she heard the soft sound of weeping. Good. Let her weep. It was time the grand seeress saw what was in front of her face. "A bible in hand does not a Messiah make," Theda hissed and the sobbing grew. Hearing it, she almost felt ashamed. Almost. The anger outstripped the shame by its sheer ecstasy and she gave it free reign. It was as good as a smear, this rage.

  The darkness harbored more than ecstasy, it seemed. Her mother's face swam from the shadows just enough for Theda to see how gleaming it was, angelic almost. Beatific. Damn her.

  "Damn you. How did you get to go when you let that happen to me?" It wasn't right; it wasn't just, that a woman who could let such brutality happen to her own daughter would ascend with the god. It defied the mere notion of enlightenment. Theda squeezed her eyes closed and thrashed away from the image. She didn't want to see that gentle face; she preferred to imagine the only one she could stand to imagine when she thought of that final day. The image she laid over top that face was a sneering, victorious one, whether or not it was accurate. It was just much easier that way.

  She brought to mind the final day, when her life had ended and this new, derelict existence began. Every cell in her body remembered how that moment felt when she watched those thousands of corporeal bodies simply shift into a different phase, shiver into waves upon waves of prisms of light, and disappear. One by one, throughout the city streets as she ran toward home, desperate to make it, terrified because she couldn't feel her own body phase. Like a thief in the night, indeed. That had been a lie too, like most of the rest of the dogma. The god had flaunted the theft of his chosen. He made them so beautiful to look upon that it struck fear into the pit of your stomach because you knew it wasn't happening to you. And grief. Grief so desolate you knew you could never recover.

  She thought she could hear whimpering in the darkness and she aimed her accusations at it, vindicated. "You didn't even wait for me," she said. "You were gone. Just gone."

  "Gone," she said again and felt as though something had reached out from the shadows and squeezed her throat. Gone, and all that was left was a shivering form stinking of her own urine, beaten
to a bloody pulp, eyes swollen shut, and whimpering like a baby.

  "How, how could you be taken when you let That happen to me?" Theda pointed at her form as it lay shivering. She wasn't even sure anymore which event she meant; it was all painful. Too painful. The ascension most of all. Just thinking about it made her sob aloud, and the sound of her grief, the feel of it clogging her throat pulled at her, caught hold of her, and yanked her back; where the fear of darkness strangled her.

  The shivers were worse now. Her face hurt so badly she couldn't help moaning. The goose bumps swam in the perspiration on her skin. She might have lost consciousness for a while, but she couldn't be sure. The shadows had shifted, of that she was certain. She could make out shelves through the gloom, but if there was anything on them, the darkness kept them hidden.

  Besides, her muscles ached too much to get off the mattress. When she lifted her head, her brains squished against the back of her skull and it felt as though there was a fat cherub on her chest, keeping her lungs from expanding. Bastard, the doctor. She was just willing to bet he felt fine today. She was just willing to bet his head was perfectly clear. Whatever virus they'd spilled in that lab certainly was fast acting. Maybe it was radiation sickness she was feeling. She thought about reaching up and sticking her fingers in her hair, but she couldn't find the courage. Instead, she listened for telltale rattles in her breathing. She tried to decide whether her bones were turning to dust.

  It might have been hours before she began to wonder about Blanche. She'd fallen asleep, hadn't she? There was a period of time where there was no thought, no pain. So, yes, she must've slept. And now that she was awake she realized they would be searching for her. They'd have found Blanche's body and would know they had an escaped religion-monger on their hands.

  She tried to tick off the time, but the truth was she wasn't sure how often she was awake and how often she was unconscious. She simply couldn't know whether it was hours or days. If she could believe them, Ezekiel would return for the religion monger at the end of three days. If she could believe them. If she could believe them at all, he would return angry and vengeful and prepared to torture and kill her.

  She wasn't sure what to believe anymore. At one time she was certain they'd been lying to her, but now... Now she simply couldn't believe anything her mind saw fit to conjure. She wasn't even sure anymore that she'd been helped to this closet by a good Samaritan. He hadn't returned.

  She tried to roll over onto her back, but even that effort took more energy than she could find. If she ever got out of there, she'd make sure the doctor ended up in the same state as Blanche. And Sal. That bigot, he'd suffer big-time. If she ever got out of here. Hell, if she even lived through the next few hours.

  She'd finally mustered the energy to roll over when she heard a noise coming through the walls. Several noises, in fact. She swore she heard gunfire, screams. But they were off in the distance, too far away to be distinct. Perhaps they had found someone they could accuse of aiding and abetting an escaped religion monger. Maybe they had found someone they'd mistaken for her and had taken her out. She almost chuckled to herself, thinking of the panic they would feel when the perpetrators realized they'd robbed the Pale Rider of the vengeance he thought the Beast should take on Enemy of the State Number One. Of course, that was assuming what they said of Ezekiel was actually true. There was a time she would never have believed that. There was a time when she would have thought them lies.

  There were more sounds echoing through the walls, close enough now that they made the plaster shake. Her pain-addled mind registered one word: Armageddon. She was living it again in her nightmares, so it was obvious she was still sleeping. Lucid dreams, the worst of them all.

  More yelling, shouting. Someone cursing. The distinct, closer sound of gunfire. Yes, Armageddon, again. She expected at any moment to smell the smoke, feel the searing heat of chemical explosions, see the bursts of lights so bright they made daylight look like dusk, lit by something more insidious than nuclear bombs, lit by the vengeance of an angry and vengeful god.

  It was when the door to her closet opened that she knew she was dreaming and not simply remembering or even hallucinating. If memory was a true account of the past, there would be no Pale Rider in the images because she had never seen him during the war. Not close up. Not close enough to see how terrifying his face could be. And that was how she truly knew she was dreaming because why else would Ezekiel be standing there in the doorway, his face such a ferocious mask of rage that she feared she might not wake up.

  Chapter 10

  METAMORPHOSIS

  Theda's face was awash with sweat, her pulse tremoring in her throat. How many hours she'd been shivering in her small room, hidden from the good doctor and his warped brand of medicine, she couldn't guess. She was starving and thirsty. Her eyes burned. She could make out the distinct smell of her own urine soaked into her johnny gown, and she just knew they'd pumped some foul virus into the lab to infect her with something. And now, after prolonged hallucinogenic visits with her mother--bless her ascended soul--here she was blinking into the yawning door and spill of hallway light at a man she believed never to see again.

  She peered into the shadows that cut the man-shaped chunk from the glare. Ezekiel. Three days had come and gone while she suffered at the hands of a surly staff, prejudiced doctors and nurses, exposed to fuck knew what in that hellish lab before ending up in this stuffy closet, seething with fever and hallucination. Theda might have felt relief but for the promise he'd made to impale her and set her ablaze as a warning to religion mongers everywhere. A fire roared behind her ears as she tried to figure out if she was really and truly seeing him. She took weary note of the satchel at his side, at the hefty round look of it, and tried to tell herself it didn't contain instruments of torture. She told herself not to listen for the telltale sound of metal clunking against metal. She would force herself to look straight at him.

  A strange mix of energy filled the space around her, making her head feel as though heat waves were skating across the pavement of her mind. It was him. In the flesh. She didn't think her fever-addled mind was capable of recreating the knot of broad shoulders bunched into an almost predatory collection of muscle, yet there he was. She couldn't see his face, but she had the sense that it had gone rigid with fury. Here, swaddled in her own sweat and urine, hid Enemy of the State Number One, all cozy in her blanket of religious fervor, disobeying the edict that she reform her ideals on pain of death, in the Beast's name, flouting that order by cowering in a closet, alive if far from well. How dare she.

  "Fuck you," she told the hallucination, because the tension was too palpable to be real, because, despite the threats he'd made, she wanted it too badly to be Ezekiel. Because if it was truly the Pale Rider, he'd have stormed the room by now and taken her by the hair, and she'd have let him by damn, she'd have let him. Her throat tightened around her need for it to be him.

  "Issat her?"

  A second person pushed past the shadow in the doorway, sealing Theda's realization that she was truly hallucinating after all. A second person with the Pale Rider just wasn't right--especially since the voice that came from the intruder was female. Throaty and sultry and damned infuriating. Theda glared at this new and indecent concoction even as the shadow in her periphery vision extracted itself from the backlit hall and groped behind a soiled mattress slumped exhausted against the plaster. A curse, then the shadow fumbled in its pockets and pulled out a flashlight.

  Light crawled along the walls and found her. She squinted into it.

  "It's her," the shadow said. The voice didn't so much as quiver with relief and she felt her fingers twist into the johnny gown at the deadpan tone. The hallucination certainly had Ezekiel's voice nailed.

  "She stinks," the female said as she edged closer. The wench actually had the nerve to wave her hand in front of her face. "Piss yourself didya, little mung?" A hefty boot toe pointed itself at Theda's rib, threatening to poke into it. "Pretty nasty
looking thing. You sure it's her?" This last directed at Ezekiel.

  "It's her." Deadpan again, as though he was looking at a block of wood that needed lugging somewhere. The words clipped themselves off from each other with perfect efficiency.

  Theda hugged herself, feeling colder than she had in hours. She decided the illusions could go pound sand unless one of them had a blissfully hallucinogenic smear. That might set things right.

  "Either of you packing godspit?" She managed a chuckle, but her cheeks reminded her how much her face hurt and she winced before remembering that her ribs hurt too. The moan fled her lungs before she could stop it.

  "Aw, sweet fuck; you didn't say she was a spitter," the infuriating female voice again, sounding thoroughly disgusted. Good. Just knowing she'd gotten under the illusion's metaphorical skin made Theda feel like a million bucks. Or at least, less like a piece of shit. Same thing, right? All things being equal and all.

  "You got a problem with sharing?" Theda let go another strangled laugh that sent slivers of pain into her ribs. She had to hold in her breath until the burning went away.

  The illusion sent her toe into the sorest part of Theda's ribcage and she let out a yelp.

  "Get the fuck up, spitter," it commanded without a single trace of pity.

  No way could a hallucination cause that much pain. Theda peered up at what she realized was a real person and shook her head. Po-Tayto: po-tahto. If she was going to die it might as well be on the sweetest of mattresses she'd enjoyed in months and not shrieking in pain as a spear was shoved up her arse, thank you very much. All things being equal, and all, she supposed.

  "Pound sand," she said and did her best to roll away.

  "I said get up." Raking fingers dug into Theda's arm and yanked. When Theda resisted, the fingers let go. There was a swishing of material before the cold hardness of steel pressed into her nose.

  "I said get up." The woman was crouched next to her, shoving the muzzle of her gun so hard, Theda's nose bent sideways. "I'd count to three but I never made it too far in school."