Chapter 9
Kaitlin followed Ethan and Sadie from the kitchen but stopped in the doorway as Kane rose to his feet.
Did he really mean to come with them?
Well, he could think again. She glared at him. His eyes narrowed, and he hovered for a moment, but then sank back down into his seat.
She blew out her breath. She so didn’t need an audience for this, because she had a weird idea that she was going to totally humiliate herself. And she had her tough-girl image to think about—she hated the idea of anyone pitying her.
She didn’t even have a picture of Sam, hadn’t seen his face since...
And did she want to know the details of what had happened to him between the time he’d been “taken to hospital” and when they had found him?
She’d heard him screaming in her head. Calling for her.
Maybe the files wouldn’t really tell her any more than she already knew. And she could finally accept that it was over. In the past. There was nothing she could do to change things now.
Or was there?
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sadie asked.
“If I don’t, I’ll always wonder.” Besides, could it be worse than what her imagination had already come up with?
Ethan led them into a large room; it was at least two stories high but still managed to feel cozy.
Bookshelves lined the walls and, at the far end, a set of stairs led to an internal balcony that ran around the room, allowing access to the higher shelves.
The decor was crimson, velvet and leather, dark wood.
The place smelled of paper and polish, and the huge log fire that crackled in the hearth. At least, the room was warm.
So why was she shivering?
She wandered around, running her fingers over the books, casting glances to where Ethan was setting up his laptop on a coffee table in front of a long leather sofa. Sadie sat beside him, watching her, a worried frown on her face.
Kaitlin’s stomach churned.
“Come and sit down,” Ethan said. She took a deep breath and moved over to where he sat. He got to his feet, smiled. “It’s not too bad, I promise.”
“You’ve watched it?”
He nodded.
Something occurred to her. “You haven’t censored it, have you?”
He opened his arms. “Take a look.”
She peered into his mind. He was hiding nothing. She exhaled and sank down onto the couch where he’d been sitting, glancing quickly at the screen. Project Isolation.
That word shot a dart of pain into her heart, and her eyes pricked. That’s what they had done. Isolated Sam from everyone he loved. From her. From the group. Even from himself.
“We’ll leave you to go through it alone,” Ethan said. “There’s some video stuff, a lot of reports. It will probably take you a while.”
She looked up at him. “Thank you.”
Sadie was still seated, clearly concerned about something. Finally, she sighed. “There’s something else.”
Kaitlin saw Ethan toss her a glance—he wasn’t sure his wife should say whatever she was going to say. Sadie shrugged.
What else could there be? Kaitlin scrubbed her hand across her face. “What?”
“I had a dream.”
She sat up straight at that, twisting on the seat so she could stare into Sadie’s face.
Many of their group had developed new powers in the last few years. Sadie dreamed about the future. She’d dreamed about Ethan before she had ever met him. Dreamed of him telling her he loved her at a point when he was still enemy number one.
What had she dreamed of now? “Tell me.”
“I saw you and Sam together.”
“I don’t understand.” That sounded more like the past than the future. But why would Sadie tell her that?
“Sam was pretty much how we saw him last.”
Her twin had been seventeen. Gangly, too thin for his height. Just like her, back then. Nothing weird yet.
“But you were as you are now,” Sadie said.
What?
Kaitlin could feel a frown forming on her face. How the hell could that be? Sam was dead. Though she supposed if Sadie did dream of the two of them, then likely Sam would have looked the same. It didn’t mean anything. In which case, why had Sadie even mentioned it?
“You think you’re seeing the future? But how?
How could that possibly happen?” But even as she said the words, her mind was racing.
“Unless I steal Kane’s time machine, somehow get it to start, work out how it functions, travel back in time to before Sam died, and bring him here.
And then hey—guess what—we both get blown up in the cataclysm. Sounds like a plan.”
But they didn’t have to return to this time and the cataclysm. They could go into the past. She’d always fancied the wild west. She could be a cowgirl—though she’d never actually been on a horse.
“Have you been thinking about that?” Ethan asked.
“Of course not. I’m not the one having weird freaking dreams.” Except she’d been daydreaming about that very thing. “You really think you could be seeing the future?”
Sadie got up, shoved her hands into her pockets, paced the length of the room, came back, and gave a huge, frustrated sigh.
“I don’t know whether all my dreams come to pass,” she said.
“We don’t know enough about time travel to make anything but guesses.
I wish you’d gotten more information from Melody when you were with her. ”
“Duh. Well, I might have, if I’d actually known she was from the future.
But I didn’t because guess what? That didn’t even occur to me.
It wasn’t like she was going around with a sign on her forehead saying: ‘I’m from the goddamn future, ask me anything you like.
’” Ethan bit back a smile. She was glad one of them was having a good time.
She turned back to Sadie. “I don’t know why you couldn’t have had a dream about it.
Told us Melody and Quinn were going to vanish to God knows where.
Or rather when. You need to sleep more.”
This time Sadie smiled. “I know. I’m just so frustrated. We know so much more now and still, it’s not nearly enough.”
“Which is all the more reason why getting hold of these guys who tried to grab me is a really good idea.”
“Yes. They could tell us a lot. But would they? Anyway, my point is, I don’t know what I’m seeing. Maybe one possible future out of thousands of possibilities.”
“Sam’s dead,” Kaitlin growled. “And even if I could time travel, I can’t go back.
It would change too much. All this—” She waved a hand to indicate Sadie and Ethan and the world in general.
“—would not happen. Us escaping, finding Kane, Jake and Christa. Everything would likely change. We have to stop the cataclysm, whatever it is. If the past changes, we might not even know it exists.”
Sadie shrugged. “If the past changes—it might not.”
Time travel was enough to make her head explode. Kaitlin gave herself a little shake. “It’s irrelevant anyway. Right now, we have no clue how the machine works and therefore no way to go back.” And even if they did, Sam wouldn’t want her to save his life at the cost of the rest of the world.
Stop thinking about it.
“Okay. But I had to tell you,” Sadie said. “We’ll leave you alone, now. We’re going to talk to Josie. See if she wants to see the files about her case.”
“I think she will. She’s much stronger than she was.”
“I know. Staying with you did her a lot of good. Thank you.”
Kaitlin watched as they walked away, until the door clicked shut behind them. Despite the fire, she shivered again. A colored throw lay over the back of the sofa, and she wrapped it around herself, then forced her attention to the laptop. Leaning forward slowly, she reached out and tapped the keys.
The screen opened to a selection of folders. She clicked on the first: Test Parameters.
To determine the viability of extracting the human brain from a telepathic test subject and controlling the functionality through computer links.
Aim: to improve controllability and remove human limitations.
What they really meant was they wanted to eliminate any problems which could arise from using a human who might have a conscience, might refuse some of the requests. Might have gone into minds they weren’t supposed to enter, uncovered secrets they weren’t supposed to know.
She flicked to the next folder: Subject Selection.
There was a file for each member of the Kindred.
She opened hers first and stared at the photograph.
She probably wouldn’t have recognized her seventeen-year-old self.
Her face was thin, her hair long, her eyes held none of the guardedness she saw in them these days.
She switched to the Word document. It was written by the colonel, but it held very little information.
She read quickly. Basically, it stated she was too valuable to put at risk.
She’d bet that had been hard to write. The colonel had never liked her—would probably have jumped at the chance to stick her brain in a jar and dump the rest of her in the garbage. The feeling was mutual.
She ignored the other files and moved straight to Sam’s.
Her heart fluttered as she stared at the photograph for long minutes.
He looked so much like her—his face thin, but his eyes were more.
..serene. She reached out and touched a fingertip to his cheek.
Grief and loss crashed through her like a tsunami of pain.
Finally, she forced herself to close the photograph and read the accompanying report.
There was more information here; maybe the bastard had had to justify his decision to himself as much as to anyone else.
What sort of man could sign off on ending the life of a seventeen-year-old kid?
A boy he had known since he was a baby. A good person who had never done any harm to anyone.
How?
Rage engulfed her, and she had to bite back the scream. She gritted her teeth. The rage was familiar. For a while, after Sam’s death, it had controlled her, consumed her, but she’d believed it was in the past.
Except there it was, slumbering in her mind. Just waiting for something to rouse it back to wakefulness. She forced the feeling down so her brain could function, then scanned the report quickly, her mind snagging on certain words and phrases, trying to determine just why Sam had been chosen.
Duplicate genetic profile. She guessed that meant he was a twin. They had another one, which made him expendable.
Unsuitable for active missions: Sam had never been used for missions. She’d gone on her first at the age of sixteen—Jake had vetoed her use before then, said she was too young.
Hell, she’d wanted to go. That had changed pretty quickly.
After the first time, she had been used almost exclusively for the missions.
Sam was never chosen, even though, as a telepath, he was as powerful as she was.
They had spent many hours discussing why.
They’d decided he was too nice. They’d thought that maybe their controllers believed that he would not be able to cope with the images he might see in some of the minds he’d have to go into. That those images might traumatize him.
As if they gave a fuck.
Kaitlin had thrown up the first time. The subject had been a serial killer.
A pedophile. She remembered what he looked like.
He’d been tied to a gurney, tortured, and she’d thought she was saving him as well.
Then she’d seen into his mind and for a brief moment, she had thought he deserved the pain.
But only briefly. She’d saved his last victim and that had made it worthwhile.
She read on...
Deemed the most suitable candidate.
Those were the words that had sealed Sam’s fate.
The report was signed by the colonel. Her hands clenched into fists at her side. If he’d been present in that moment, she would have killed him with her bare hands.
She took a deep breath. She needed to see this through, and she forced herself to read the rest of the reports—there was a lot of technical stuff, which she didn’t understand. The final file was a video.
Did she want to see it?
But she had to. Imagination could probably—hopefully—conjure up far worse scenarios than reality. She’d dreamed of what he had gone through so many times.
She opened the video file, her breath catching in her throat as she saw Sam. He was led into the operating room, appearing a little lost. She recognized the medical staff from the compound. She recognized Linda—the woman they had killed the night they’d found Sam.
As he lay on the gurney, he seemed relaxed, not bothered.
She saw the moment that changed. His eyes widened.
He was staring at the doctor; his expression filled with horror.
At a guess, he had read the man’s mind. That was against all their protocols, but she imagined that the days of isolation had worn away his resolve to stick to the rules.
He screamed then. Screamed her name, and every muscle in her body clenched tight. He’d expected her to save him.
Her.
What a joke.
He screamed again, fighting against the restraints. The nurse jabbed a needle into his arm, and he collapsed back, his eyes closing.
She forced herself to watch the video through until the end. Watched them desecrate his body. Tears fell down her cheeks, and she didn’t bother wiping them away. At least the screams had been fear rather than pain. She’d been so scared about what he had gone through.
When she’d been tortured, she’d thought of Sam.
The memories had made her stronger, helped her withstand the pain.
Maybe she’d thought of it as punishment for what she had done.
Or maybe what she hadn’t done. She should have seen what happened to Sam coming.
She should have known there was something wrong.
When the staff at the compound started wearing the reflector devices, hiding their thoughts, why hadn’t she realized that they weren’t safe?
For that matter, why hadn’t Jake? The others?
She’d been a child, only seventeen. They’d been adults.
The closest thing to a family she had, and they had let her down.
Let Sam down. All of them. Even Kane, who’d promised to help.
He could have moved in and saved them. Instead, he’d tried to eliminate them all.
In that moment, she recognized that she had lost faith in everyone. Even herself. Maybe especially herself.
If only...
She switched back to the photo of Sam and curled on her side, her head on the cushion.
She finally fell asleep, her fingers touching his cheek.