The Psychic Mind of Olly McLeod

Prologue

In the darkness, the Mental Health Inpatient Unit, with all its predictable tides and rhythms, was anything but silent.

In bed, I listened to the sounds of the unit: a distant flushing toilet, a man singing a hymn two doors down, and a woman farther down the hall crying hysterically.

Then I ever so slightly eased up on the tightly coiled part of my mind which lets in others’ thoughts to really listen.

The surface thoughts of the other patients lit up in my head as I searched out anything unusual.

It’s the regular mix of what one can expect in a place like this: Why this, Lord?

; I want to go home; would that bitch shut up for two damn minutes; I can’t sleep without my own pillow.

Next, I reached out to the staff, and I knew tonight was the night as I heard the unmistakable opening credits on a Netflix film.

The two overnight staff were getting settled in and, with a little luck, would be facing the computer monitor in the nurses’ station, which conveniently put their gaze in the opposite direction of both my room and the side exit that leads to the garden and is a straight shot into the woods.

The same side exit that had been conveniently unlocked—a gift from a friend who was no longer here.

I let my mind linger around the nurses’ station, confirming that they are both facing away from me, watching a movie.

They aren’t doing bed checks for twenty more minutes.

If I was going to pull this off, it had to be now.

I closed my eyes and retreated into myself, took a deep breath, and moved.

My head swam with dizziness as I sat up, an effect of whatever medications they had been pouring into my body.

If I’m going to be moving at a quick pace, and then my top speed outdoors, I’ll need to be very, very careful.

My feet were bare as they touched down on the cold, buffed floor, the whereabouts of my socks and shoes unknown, as Nurse Elizabeth was not permitted to bring me the tote she had gathered supplies for me in before she was fired earlier today.

I was on my own. More importantly, I knew which button on the IV pumps to press to circumvent the alarm.

This wasn’t my first time in a hospital, and the nurses always pressed the same one when altering anything to do with my drips.

I held my breath, reached for the bottom pump on the pole, and just as I was about to press the button, a small glowing green moth appeared right on top of the button below the one I was ready to push, its lime colour softly lighting up the way to the correct place.

I’d been so certain I was right, but I’ve learned not to question when the universe sends me signals.

I carefully extended a finger and urged the moth to hop on, giving it a quiet word of thanks before it blinked out of existence and back to wherever it had come from, and pressed that button instead.

They must have done something earlier today when I was still passed out, because no alarm sounded.

I yanked a cannula out of my arm, a small amount of blood trickling down from my inner elbow, the tape taking a fair bit of my arm hair with it.

I held my breath, waiting for a nurse—or perhaps someone pretending to be a nurse—to run in here and snap on the lights, ready with an injection of something to knock me out.

It wouldn’t be the first time. But I was off chemical restraints now due to Elizabeth’s actions, so it was time to do the one thing I promised my doctors a hundred times I wouldn’t do, which was run.

The legitimate staff who worked here, and the fine folks who ran this hospital, had no idea they’d been infiltrated by a malicious outside force, oblivious to an old evil festering right under their noses.

And why wouldn’t they be? If one of their psychiatric patients started spouting off about dark conspiracies involving unwilling patients and experimental treatments, they’d just give a kind but condescending speech about how safe the unit was and have the psychiatrist in charge alter their medication regimen.

But what luck that the same night I had been taken off restraints would be a night when both nurses were real.

They weren’t hallucinations, ghosts, or figments of my imagination.

Better still, they were innocent and untainted by The Organization For The Advanced Mind, which held me hostage here.

I pressed the button on one more pump and yanked the tubing out of the back of my hand, not caring that pulling off the tape that hard and fast hurt like all hell.

The plasticky bed covering crinkled as I arose at sloth speed, heaving myself up with the help of the bar on one side of the bed.

By the time I was sitting, I was practically tachycardic.

I had no idea what was in those nefarious drips, but I did know that I’d be keener and less foggy without them, even if I had to practice some breathing exercises to slow my heart rate.

I held my bulging belly as I found my footing, and not for the first time, I wondered how in the hell I got into this mess.

Actually, that had a rather simple explanation.

I trusted the wrong person, and I paid dearly for it, as had my baby.

I was at the start of my eighth month, and running barefoot through the woods in damp April weather wasn’t ideal in any sense of the word.

Still, we’d passed ideal after I’d been kidnapped and placed in this hospital as a holding facility until they could take me goddess knows where and presumably run further experiments on me—and my child.

Even though my legs still felt shaky from the meds, and I was about as graceful as a baby deer, I started to walk to my room’s door.

My back ached, and I was supporting my bump with my left arm.

I knew I should go slower and find my feet until I was ready to flee.

However, I felt possessed by a sense of urgency.

Sweat trickled down my forehead, and I gazed at the lit hallway through the crack in my door.

Everything felt normal. That was when I made my move, slipping into the hallway and seeing the lit-up Exit sign right above the alarmed door to my right.

When I hit that thing, I had to be ready to run like a pack of hellhounds was on my heels, something that I anticipated would be nearly impossible in this waddling stage of pregnancy.

However, what choice did I have? I was a mere halfway down the hall when shit hit the fan.

I heard the buzzer for the main entrance go off and dared to look back.

Two men in scrubs waltzed in, carrying a tray of Tim Hortons coffee cups.

Who the fuck were they? No new staff were due in until morning.

A quick touch of the mind and I knew exactly who they were—Organization lackeys.

And they had me in their sights, if their sudden dropped double-doubles and running full tilt toward me were signs.

I hit the door at what didn’t quite qualify as a run, more like a shuffle, panting heavily with sweat streaming into my eyes.

My legs were screaming, and I struggled to get them to move, their unwillingness to cooperate constituting a major problem here.

I slammed the full weight of my left hip and shoulder into the door, and the alarm that went off was loud enough to wake the dead.

I stumbled through the garden, supporting my belly with one arm and using the other to try to maintain balance.

I was on the small, paved road between the garden and the woods when a sudden sharpness hit me in the back, and I went down like a wounded animal.

My body was rigid, and I overheard their conversation while I struggled to get up.

With my belly the size it was, it wasn’t easy, especially when my legs still weren’t exactly cooperating.

Thank goddess I’d landed on my side and not my front, at least. Though with space being at a premium in my belly, there really was no good way to land that would prevent Bea from the impact.

“Not the taser, you idiot, she’s pregnant with an Asset!” Lackey One yelled at his partner.

“Christ, no one said anything about a magic baby. We were just told to secure her. How was I supposed to know?”

“You absolute moron. Don’t you read the weekly newsletter? Ugh, fuck it, of course you don’t. No one as stupid as you should be outfitted with any kind of weapon. Give that to me. The helicopter is waiting up in that abandoned parking lot off North.”

Helicopter? No way was I getting in an Organization helicopter.

There were plenty of places in the world where they could make me utterly disappear while running their crazy experiments.

For the first time since I’d found out about the baby, I felt nothing but fear.

The fact that Lackey One was now holding a handgun, while Lackey Two showed considerable strength by scooping me up, did nothing to assuage the situation.

Panic rising, I struggled in the arms of my captor until it felt like my circuits overloaded, and I retreated to the vast ocean within me, to dive without breath amongst the creatures of the deep.