Hardwick stared at his adapted eye socket and Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Burnfield looked about ready to fall asleep where he sat, the brandy probably being the final straw. Whether he should have been drinking whilst on duty was another thing he wasn’t prepared to raise.
“The day of the surgery, I was ready to leave. I’d had enough of the pressure and the attention. I’d been made to sit through weeks of training and simulations and tests and it was finally here, the day of no turning back. Keeley had made me stay. She knew that the other options were no options at all. Whilst we had contacts that could have helped us out of the district, I was even more afraid of a life on the run than I was of interpreting the memories of the dead.”
“So, how did you cope?”
“I shut myself down. Pretended this was happening to somebody else. But it was Keeley that helped me the most. She knew how painful it was. How sick with worry it was making me, and she told me she would be there beside me no matter what happened.”
Hardwick nodded. The story of Jack’s personal life seemed to be feeding his energy. He looked more awake than any of them.
“And have you ever met Devan Oster?”
“Once. He came to a training session.”
“What was he like?”
Jack remembered the older man introducing himself that day, taking them by surprise by how much older he seemed than when he was on the news feeds. Smartly dressed, and softly spoken, he commanded attention, drawing people in with his words. He’d told them how important they were for the future of OsMiTech and the perception of telepaths. Being able to help solve murders in a society as troubled as theirs could prove a tipping point into telepaths’ acceptance into all facets of society. No longer would telepaths be seen as the status symbols of the wealthy, or agents working for the multi-national corporations. The keepers would be there for the everyman, helping to bring down murder rates and demonstrate that the dead still had a voice. It was a motivating speech. Jack could almost remember it word for word and for a time Devan had been right. The voices of the dead incriminating their murderers from beyond the grave proved a massive deterrent in the remnant keepers first year of operation, and even though criminals were taking steps to protect themselves, it felt for the first time in decades that the police had an ally.
“He’s driven. I don’t think he’s ever had anyone say no to him.” And that makes him a dangerous man to cross.
Hardwick set his own drink down, Jack didn’t think he’d taken a sip from his either, and announced he was off to bed. “It’s funny how much you can miss your own mattress.”
Jack wished him goodnight and watched him head upstairs. Much of the animosity he’d felt towards the man had dissipated during the evening. Hardwick may have had little in common with Jack, but he wasn’t hurting anybody by his secret surgeries. It was a service which people paid money for, he wasn’t stealing it from them. He might have crossed the line by preparing assets to blackmail his customer base with, but that was already biting him on the arse. Perhaps he didn’t deserve the bad rap the media were giving him.
Jack checked Burnfield. He was lightly snoring, still clutching the empty brandy glass in his hand. Jack took it from him gently and set it on the table beside him, then he let the man sleep.
Jack’s mind had too many things racing around for him to sleep. Despite the long day, his thoughts weren’t ready to relax just yet. Besides, there was always the chance of more of Ella’s memories coming to him when he closed his eyes and he didn’t want to be distracted by that when the time came. He needed to be alert and ready.
The house seemed quiet. Jack idly wondered whether Hardwick might try to make a break for it from an upstairs window, but after seeing the short unfit man, he doubted he was up to performing any escape acrobatics.
And then, just as Jack was prepared to settle down in the armchair and wait, he heard the kitchen door that led to the garden open.
He checked his HALO. About an hour had passed since Hardwick had gone to bed. He glanced at Burnfield and thought back to the original plan of both of them being ready to deal with this. But the man was deeply sleeping, and it gave Jack pause for thought. This was something he wanted to handle on his own. He’d earned the right.
Anna was waiting for him in the kitchen as he knew she would. Her hair had been tied back into a tidy ponytail. She wore a dark leather jacket, and her face was clear of make-up. So unlike the woman he’d come to know over the last few years. She hesitated when she saw Jack. For a moment he thought she might run back out the way she’d come, but instead a wan smile appeared on her face.
“Glad you could make it,” he said pleasantly, like meeting an old friend. Except Anna was anything but.
“You don’t seem surprised,” she countered. “Why aren’t you surprised?”
“I’ve been surprised enough. I’ve learnt to not believe my own eyes. I might have seen you shot in the head, but without a body there was always a niggling doubt that something wasn’t quite right. I never could understand why Leech would have bothered to remove your dead body. The answer was ridiculously obvious, of course. There was never a dead body to remove. You weren’t shot. You faked it.”
Anna pulled a gun from inside her jacket. “However, this isn’t fake, so I’d like you to sit down on the floor on your hands.”
“There’s no need for this, Anna.”
She waved the gun at him, and Jack could see the confusion in her wide eyes. All the time she was talking to Jack, her eyes were glancing at the exits from the room. Her skin, normally so smooth and radiant, now had a pallid colour like the moonlight shining through the windows. He’d been expecting a ghost, but it was a ghoul that stood before him.
“Where is he?”
“Your surgeon? Asleep in bed.”
She took a step to the doorway, torn between going upstairs, and keeping her weapon trained on Jack. From inside her jacket, she pulled out a thin cylinder. At the touch of a button, a jagged point shot out of the end.
Jack recognised the device—an eye burner. “You’re going to destroy his eyes. Make sure there’re no remnants left. How long were you waiting out there?”
“Long enough. I wasn’t expecting to see you here, though.”
Jack was glad he’d spent time practising his blocking patterns on the way up here. She’d have scanned the house and if his blocking patterns weren’t up to scratch, she’d have detected his presence.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t think you’d come if you knew we were here. How long have you been able to do that?”
She tilted her head. “Do what?”
“Your illusion back at Honey’s apartment. I saw you shot.”
“You saw what I wanted you to see.”
“Come again?”
She sighed and checked her HALO for the time. “Still believing everything OsMiTech tell you, Jack?”
“What have OsMiTech got to do with it?”
“Everything,” she said, her voice rising. Jack wondered whether he might get her angry enough that Burnfield would hear. “OsMiTech control all the information on telepaths and their histories. No one ever thinks to question it, though. You never thought to question it. Back when you were having your initial training, you were the most compliant of the lot, always willing to go along with whatever nonsense OsMiTech threw your way. But, OsMiTech are wrong, they’re so wrong about so many things.”
“You worked for them.”
“I infiltrated them. They would never have had me working there if they’d known who I really was.”
“Gwenith McKean.”
She reacted like he’d just punched her in the stomach, almost doubling up and supporting herself by leaning on the kitchen counter. “How did you find out? Hardwick’s been talking?”
“Not yet. I don’t think he knows what mess he’s caused. He was only ever looking out for himself. Hoping to have insurance should the wrong people come calling. We’ve seen his list, Anna. The same list
that Keeley saw on the day she was killed. That’s why she called me. That’s why she tried to get back home to warn me.”
“She contacted me that morning,” Anna said sadly, looking at her hand holding the gun. “She said she wanted to tell my story. She promised me she could get me protection. But, my only protection was my anonymity. As soon as she revealed that she’d found my name from Hardwick’s list she had to die. I’m sorry.”
“You’re the first telepath,” Jack said. “You’re the beginning. You’re where it all started.”
“No. This isn’t my doing. You make it sound like I’m responsible. I didn’t make a race of telepaths. They found me, tested me, then tried to kill me. What choice did I have other than to run? I’ve been running ever since. But then I found a man who could help me hide in plain sight. Hardwick promised the best facial surgery in the country and for a price he could deliver. It was either that or hand myself over to the authorities and let them experiment on me for the rest of my life. And they’d have done it. Don’t doubt it.
“I first learnt I could implant thoughts when I was a little girl and I’ve been hiding from people ever since. I don’t know where it came from, or why I’m the first we know about. I wasn’t anyone special. At least, not back then.
“But, it’s come at a cost. I’ve lost more than you’ve ever had. I scared myself the first time I looked in a mirror. There was nothing left of the old Gwenith. This new face was a stranger looking back. It took a while before I could even look at myself. This stranger. Hardwick, despite his scruples, does good work. They should recruit him, not prosecute him.”
“But you went to work for OsMiTech. Why put yourself at such risk? What about being scanned? They could find you out.”
She shook her head lightly, the question meaningless to her. “They could never scan me. I’m off the scale.”
Jack wondered what she meant by that. The teep scale was a well-established part of being a telepath. Everyone was graded, and that information was used to match telepaths up to the work they would be doing.
“The telepath scale?” Jack asked. “How could that be?”
She shrugged. “They knew I was a threat to them when they first took me to the Randi institute. I could do more than just read thoughts.”
she said inside Jack’s head. The blocking patterns he’d spent the last hours practising and building up crumbled like a sand castle being met with a bully’s foot. And then, suddenly, he was back in Honey’s apartment, leaning back against the wall, Leech pointing his gun at him and Anna.
The bullet reached Anna’s forehead and just froze, a pressure mark had formed where the bullet met her skin.
And then the illusion went. Hardwick’s kitchen blinked into existence around him again and Anna was staring at him from across the room.
“You implanted the memory of your manufactured death in my head?”
“It’s a simple enough skill, but it’s one that’s forced me on the run since they discovered I could do it. Do you know they called me Prime? They thought there would be others but if there are they haven’t been able to find any yet.”
“And Hardwick knew who you were. You were on his list.”
“I gave a false name. I’m not stupid. I hadn’t gone by my real name for years, but when your wife contacted me, offering to run a story, I realised what had happened. As part of the process, he took blood samples. My DNA would have been matched to the main hospital databases. He knew he had me back then and over these years I never had a clue.”
Jack tried hard to keep his voice level. He blinked, looked at his feet. The woman in front of him was no longer the woman he thought he’d known. “You killed Keeley.”
“She saw my name on the list and recognised it.”
“She was writing a history on Devan Oster and the rise of the telepaths. Your name would have been part of that history. It would have stood out like a beacon. But, if it wasn’t her, others would have seen your name, they’d have broken the secret. Outed you as Gwenith.”
“I knew it was only a matter of time. Hours maybe, days if I was lucky. As soon as someone with clout processed Hardwick’s list, they’d find me and I’d be apprehended. I knew I had to disappear again. A bullet through the face was one way of doing that, but I reacted to Keeley. I wanted to limit the wound. Stem the bleeding for as long as possible to give me more time to prepare. Anna had to die and I knew I needed a new identity—but that comes at a cost. I took years to establish myself as Anna Lovett. Years and a lot of money. I couldn’t afford to just run away from it all and start from scratch. I wasn’t prepared to start again. It wasn’t fair.
“I’ve been trying to sort my finances out in preparation. But, it’s hard work. I’ve tried to prepare for this eventuality. It’s come too soon. I was nowhere near ready enough.”
Jack thought she looked exhausted. Being on the run from the authorities, not knowing when you’ll be discovered—the stress must have been enormous. Jack didn’t think he’d have been strong enough to do that.
“And what about Leech? You used him?”
“A convenient tool. One of my…gifts.”
“But he was disposable as well.”
She frowned. “Stop judging me, Jack. I did what I had to to survive.”
“Your hold on Leech wasn’t as tight as you thought. He left enough evidence behind for me to catch up with him. He wanted to be caught. How long did you use him as a puppet? Before the Wei’s?”
Anna smirked. “The Wei’s were the first. It took some arranging to get their eyes sent to you after Keeley called. But, I saw an opportunity to tidy up two messes. It was poetic. Too good to waste. But, I made a mistake when he killed the Wei’s. I lost control of him when he was in their house. It could have led people to him. He blabbed. I needed to tidy up the mess.”
“But why the hell did you want the Wei’s dead? Were they onto your secret as well?”
She laughed. “No. That was something completely different. But, right now, I’m not ready to share that. I need to find out more for myself. And when I’ve got what I need, then I’ll bring him down.”
“Who?”
“Yes, who are you talking about, Anna?” Hardwick stood in the doorway, a gun in his hand pointed directly at Anna.
She spun round, her own gun coming to bear on the newcomer, but he shouted at her to stop.
“It’s been fascinating listening to your confession. That is what’s happening here isn’t it?”
Jack didn’t pause to consider how Hardwick had smuggled a gun into the house. Hadn’t Burnfield’s team searched the property before bringing him in? Hadn’t the original team? Then he recognised the shape. It was a police issue. Jack had a crawling sensation on the backs of his arms.
“What have you done to Burnfield?” Jack asked, kicking himself for failing to check on him properly before coming into the kitchen. And then realisation came to him. “You spiked his drink.”
“Pity you didn’t drink yours.”
“Gave it up,” Jack said, shrugging. Without Burnfield to come in and save them, he was facing down two people that were happy for him to be dead. His only advantage was that the two of them were equally disdainful of each other. Anna needed Hardwick to be dead, and Hardwick lost his leverage over her if he were to pull the trigger. He might do it, though. He might be willing to cut his losses. He’d already done a deal. Capturing the prime telepath would help his case for freedom.
“You’re going to have to drop your weapon,” he told Anna, that once jovial face replaced with a look of stone.
She complied.
“Kick it over.”
The gun skittered across the tiles and ended by Hardwick’s feet.
“And the other thing. What is that?”
She dropped the eye burner on the floor and kicked that over as well. Anna appeared as defenceless as Jack.
“I didn’t think you’d actually bother to kill me, Anna. Where would that get you? They’ve already got my list.”
“It buys me time. Plus, I reckon you had some contacts that might prove useful.”
“The Kostra Vosta? You fancy working for them?” he laughed. “Unsurprisingly, they don’t trust telepaths.”
“I figured they’d know a thing or two about vanishing.”
Wherever Anna was going with this, Jack wasn’t following. She was offering her services to the most notorious crime family in the country. Jack hadn’t even been convinced they existed. He still suspected it was a lot of hot air from Hardwick to sound more important than he was. But, Anna seemed to believe in their existence.
Jack felt in his pocket. If he could get close enough without being shot.
“Did you come here to kill me, Anna?” Hardwick asked.
“Of course not. I wanted you to understand how much my anonymity means to me.”
He grinned. “And I thought I’d got too good a deal. I suppose this was your plan—“, he glanced at Jack, “—using me as bait to draw her out. Well, I don’t take kindly to being used.”
“I’m afraid you might have to get used to it,” Anna said. Her smile could slice through lemons. “I need you to put the gun down.”
Hardwick was struggling with something. The arm holding his gun wavered as if he had the shakes.
“There’s a good boy,” Anna said softly, “it won’t hurt if you do what you’re told.”
“What...” but the words stopped coming and Hardwick turned his gun away from Anna and pointed it squarely at Jack’s chest. It took Jack a long few seconds to work out what was happening.
The Remnant Keeper (Tombs Rising Book 1) Page 22
