Chapter Three #2
He stood aside and waited for her to move into the jagged, six-foot-high rip in the green quartz wall of the tunnel.
The ancient Aliens had used the stone to construct the maze of underground passages that crisscrossed the planet.
They had built their surface cities of the same nearly impervious material.
But it was evident they had never been comfortable aboveground.
The experts assumed that something in the atmosphere had proved toxic to them.
Even though they had evidently thrived in the Underworld, creating whole cities and a vast rainforest belowground, in the end they had abandoned the planet thousands of years ago, leaving no biological trace of their existence.
No burial sites, no bones, no representational art had ever been discovered.
No one knew why they had left, but the astonishing wonders they had constructed of the psi-infused quartz endured as proof that humans were not the first to colonize Harmony.
Sebastian chortled and fluttered through the rip in the tunnel wall.
Dust bunnies did not need amber to navigate the tunnels.
They were as much at home in the maze as they were on the surface.
The benefits of having evolved on the planet, Alice thought.
Harmony was awash in paranormal energy currents.
She followed Sebastian into the radiant tunnel.
The faint rush created by the invisible tides of psi flooding the Underworld hit her like a mild tonic.
Her spirits lifted. She was no longer trapped in the nightmare hotel.
She was safe, temporarily at least, in the tunnels.
She had Sebastian and she had her go bag.
If Owen March showed signs of being dangerous, she was pretty sure she could duck into a side tunnel and disappear.
Her amber was tuned and locked—thanks to a certain tuner who had come highly recommended by Vinnie the Broker.
No one could follow her through the Underworld.
Unaware or unconcerned that she might be developing contingency plans, Owen pulled the heavy mag-steel door closed and rezzed the lock. He unclipped the locator on his belt and hurried after her.
“We need to move quickly,” he said. He started walking, setting a swift pace. “It will take some time for the goons to realize that we’re not hiding in one of the hotel rooms, but sooner or later they’ll find the hole-in-the-wall in the basement. I assume your amber is locked?”
“Of course,” she said, proud of her knowledge of such sophisticated matters.
“So is mine. That means they can’t follow us down here, but since they are ex-Guild, one or more of them will have a locator.
Those guys never leave home without one.
They’re all paranoid about getting lost in the Underworld.
Unfortunately for us, a locator will tell them where the nearest charted aboveground ruins are.
They’ll realize that’s the exit point we’re most likely to use. ”
“Is it the exit point we’re going to use?” she asked.
She was forced to break into a trot to keep up and silently gave thanks that she was wearing sneakers. But the go bag was heavy. It bounced uncomfortably on her back.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t have much choice,” Owen said. “I needed the closest one I could find. The other two possibilities are miles away.”
“I’ve got a lot of questions, Mr. March.”
“I understand, and I’ll answer as many of them as I can once we’re in the car and heading away from here.”
“What destination did you have in mind?” she asked warily.
“Illusion Town. It’s the nearest large metro area, and it’s easier to keep a low profile in a city with a fluid population.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. Illusion Town was home. In the past seven months she had come to know it well. Once inside the city limits, she could disappear.
“Good choice,” she said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic.
“You ought to know. You’ve been hiding out there since you escaped from Serenity Gardens.”
It wasn’t just unnerving to realize that he knew so much about her—it was annoying. A short time ago she had been on the verge of panic. Now she was having to work to control her temper. Such emotional volatility was unusual for her. It just went to show how high her stress levels were.
“You can drop me off at any of the big casinos,” she said, trying for a cool, casual edge. “I’ll take a cab from there.”
“If you’re thinking of going back to that rental at 121 Fireview Lane in the Dark Zone, forget it. That would be a really dumb thing to do.”
She went cold. “You know where I live.”
“Yes, and now, thanks to me, so do Dunstan Kelbrook and his fixer.”
“You’re working for Kelbrook?” she whispered, stunned.
“Not any longer. I got played. Although, in my own defense, there’s a high probability that you would have been found in the next couple of months, even without my assistance. The people looking for you have a lot of serious resources.”
He was treating her like an impulsive runaway who didn’t know how to survive on the streets. She had escaped a locked ward and lived under a new identity for seven months, damn it. She had friends and grateful clients who had connections. She was not an amateur.
“I left Serenity Gardens months ago. Why are people suddenly looking for me now?”
“The situation has changed. Until recently, the head of Serenity Gardens failed to inform Dunstan Kelbrook that you had escaped three months after you were committed.”
“I knew it.” She tightened her grip on the strap of the pack. “That creep Webber sat back and collected the money Kelbrook paid him to keep me drugged and conveniently out of sight.” She paused before adding, “No one ever came to visit me, so no one except the staff knew I was missing.”
Owen gave her a quick, sharp glance. She realized she might have sounded a bit wistful. She really had to get control of her emotions.
“No one came to visit you,” he said, “because Webber wouldn’t allow it. The official line was that visitors would upset your therapy.”
“Oh.” That made her feel better, she realized. “How did you find me?”
“I specialize in the genetic inheritance patterns of paranormal talents. I followed the bloodline.”
“What bloodline? You couldn’t possibly have found me in an ancestry database. I’m not registered with any. There’s no record of my birth or my biological parents. I was handed over to a privately run orphanage immediately after I was born.”
“I know,” he said. “And when you began to come into your talent at the age of twelve, the director of the orphanage arranged for you to attend the Ballantine Academy as a year-round boarding student.”
“She felt I was a potential danger to the other girls in the orphanage because of the nature of my talent,” Alice said. “She did what she thought was best for everyone involved, including me.”
She worked hard to keep her tone as calm and positive as possible.
She thought she did a middling job of it, but there may have been a slight wobble.
Memories of that fateful day in the director’s office flickered in the dark.
As it turned out, the move to the Ballantine campus was the best thing that could have happened to her, but there had been no way to know that at the time.
The only thing that had been starkly clear as she stood in front of the director’s desk was that she was being given away for the second time in her life.
“The director was right,” she added quickly. “It just took me a while to realize it. I was only twelve, you see. I had not yet begun to learn how to achieve control and harmonic balance.”
“In other words, you cried a lot.”
“Only at the beginning.” She blinked away the memories and smiled. “Cadence Ballantine and her Academy gave me a home.”
Under the benevolent guidance of Cadence Ballantine and the dedicated staff, she had not only received an excellent education, she had found a community.
She had learned to master her powerful but sometimes disturbing psychic senses and use them in a positive way.
Well, mostly positive. Exceptions to every rule and all that.
The Core Principles were not opposed to the concept of self-defense.
After graduation she had become an instructor on the staff.
She had loved the school, the students, and her colleagues.
Most of all, she had adored Cadence Ballantine.
She had envisioned living on the campus for the rest of her life, filling her days with her studies and teaching, gardening, art, and, most importantly, applying her talent in a positive way.
She had even been contemplating marriage and a family.
But the elegantly balanced, harmonic vision of her future had been shattered eighteen months earlier when the beloved founder of the Ballantine Academy died.
It wasn’t long before it came to light that, while she was a noble, brilliant, compassionate teacher and para-psychiatrist, Cadence Ballantine had not been skilled when it came to managing the school’s finances.
The creditors had swept in immediately after the funeral and proceeded to sell off everything from the desks to the light fixtures, and then they had sold the entire campus—lush walled gardens, graceful cloisters, serene fountains—to a tech company.
The firm had vowed to maintain the original buildings and landscaping, declaring the campus an important architectural landmark.
That promise had lasted approximately twenty-four hours after the papers were signed.
The campus was now a collection of glossy mag-steel-and-glass buildings and parking lots.
“You were fortunate,” Owen said. “A lot of kids in your situation would have ended up in an institution because they couldn’t handle a high-rez talent.”