“I’ve had enough bullshit for the night. I’m going to sleep. Someone wake me when it’s time to blow stuff up.”
Chapter 62
In the morning, Cassie was woken by the sound of chains rattling. She popped her head out from under her blanket to see a guard unlocking her door.
“Get up and get dressed.”
She did as he said, and the guards marched her and her friends back to the house, where they sat in the dining room around an antique wood table set for a meal.
The guard from the night before said to the servant girl, “Get them some food, Dina.” The girl came back a few moments later with platters of eggs, bacon, and toast. The lead guard sat down with them to eat, but the others stood around the table with their rifles.
“Now, tell me about the witch,” he said, ripping a piece of bread with his teeth.
Cassie ate her bread, glad at least one item on her to-do list had been fulfilled. She was worried about Circe, but she knew that if anyone could hold her own with someone like Xavier, it was her friend.
“She is a witch from a coven in Arizona, and one of the best people I know. She trained me in my abilities and has healed almost all of us at one point or another.” All her friends nodded.
“Your abilities?” the guard asked.
“Oh, I can blow stuff up with my mind. I could blow you up if you want a demonstration.”
“Cassandra…” Rafe warned.
“That won’t be necessary. The way this settlement functions is by following a dominant leader. We have none now. No decisions can be made.”
“Doesn’t he have a second?”
“Yes. Me. And in his absence I am to rule by my own authority. I never did agree with his attitude about your mission.”
“Awesome! You’ll help us, then?”
“I will. But first I want to see you blow something up with your mind.”
Cassie, Rafe, and the new leader, Spencer, stood in the pasture on the other side of the fence from the grazing cattle. Target dummies had been set up on bales of hay a dozen yards in the distance.
“Go ahead,” Spencer said. He had been an English teacher before the war. Now he was an owl shifter, more suited to an advisory role than a leadership one.
She dug into the earth, drawing the energy from the core of the planet. It gathered in a massive stream, rising upward through her body to burst out the top of her head. It shot up into the atmosphere and into space. There it pulled the energy of the universe in, plummeted back down through the top of Cassie’s head, and pooled in her solar plexus.
Once it had gathered strength, she put up her hands and directed the energy in a focused blast, right at the dummy. It exploded with such force that the hay rained down on the group.
Spencer blinked, looking at her in shock.
“I know, right?” she said, with a huge smile on her face. No one else she knew of could do such a thing. Even the witches couldn’t focus energy blasts like she could.
“Remarkable. Do you think you could take down an Anu ship like that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“Let’s keep that on the back burner for now. What can I do to help you?”
Chapter 63
Rafe, Cassie, Emilia, and Brigid sat in the workshop, with Spencer looking on curiously. The terminal looked as though it had seen better days, and Cassie had her doubts about using the thing to get inside The Program. Rafe’s terminal had been the Ritz compared to this battered thing.
“I’m not sure if it will work,” said Emilia.
“Now you tell us,” said Cassie. She couldn’t help her irritated tone. She always felt irritated when presented with the prospect of going inside with a subpar terminal.
“She can fix anything,” Brigid said, defending her girlfriend.
Cassie watched as Emilia and Rafe worked on the innards of the busted terminal, and she grew more nervous every second. She wished Circe were here. Circe had a way of keeping her calm in the most challenging circumstances.
Cassie had lost a lot of people in the war and even more after escaping from the dome. But losing Circe left a deep ache in her chest. She didn’t know if her friend was alive or dead. She didn’t know if Circe was being tortured or if she was in pain.
While Rafe and Emilia worked, Cassie drew her consciousness into a deep meditation. Without the help of the witches, and sitting in the middle of the workshop, it was harder to get out of her body. It took her several tries and intense concentration to move from her own body and into her astral one.
Once out, she stepped into the center of the room. She turned and saw Brigid giving her a look that said, What the hell are you doing? Cassie shrugged and shot out through the roof.
She told her subconscious to find Circe. They were attached by the bond of friendship, and her soul could feel the tug of Circe’s soul. She moved quickly through the air, flying north and inland until she reached high peaks that still held a dusting of snow.
As she drew near, she could see Circe at the top of the mountain, walking through a pine forest. Cassie descended and stood next to her friend. But Circe looked different. Her skin had grown rosy and lost its deep pallor. Her hair looked wavy and auburn, not pin straight and jet black.
“What happened?” Cassie asked in her astral body, straight into Circe’s mind.
“I don’t know. He touched me and we both changed. I have become human. Some of my strongest powers are gone. But he—he seems to have lost his humanity. He’s keeping me here. I don’t know why.”
“I’ll come get you.”
“No. You have your own battle to fight. This battle is mine.”
“Circe.”
“Cassie. Go.”
Cassie shot back and into her body. She gasped as she blinked into physical awareness. Everyone stared at her.
“Where did you go?” asked Brigid.
“I went to find Circe. Xavier took her. He’s holding her prisoner somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas. They’ve both… changed.”
“Changed how? Where are they? We need to go get them,” Spencer said.
“I don’t think that is a good idea right now. Circe said Xavier had ‘lost his humanity.’ She told me to stay away.”
Spencer slid back into his seat. “It’s worse than I’d feared.”
“Cassandra,” Rafe said. “We are ready for you.”
Cassie took a deep breath and walked over to the ancient plastic deck chair where they’d set up the virtual-reality helmet. She dreaded going back into The Program under these conditions.
“How will you find the right coordinates?” she asked, sitting down and holding the helmet in her hands.
“We’ll have to adjust while you’re inside. Emilia’s screen works pretty well. We can see what is going on in there. Since we’re close to the dome, we can run through the coordinates until you come across one of the kids inside.”
“That sounds like a really bad plan.”
“It’s what we’ve got, Cassandra. You will be on the same frequency this way. You said yourself there is no other way to get inside. This our shot.”
“Oh, God. I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. Fine. Do you have serum?”
“No. You will have to use your own meditation ability to go under.”
“Great. This just keeps getting better.”
“Look on the bright side, my warrior-seer—it might make the whole thing easier on your system.”
“Meh. You’ve got a point. Rafe, I love you,” she said, touching his arm lightly.
“I love you, too, Cassandra.” He kissed her forehead sweetly and brushed her hair behind her ear.
She gave him one last smile and put the helmet on her head, leaning back on the reclining deck chair. As the helmet began to take effect, she took several deep breaths, willing herself deep into meditation.
She went to the place where her astral body could disconnect and spirit-walk through space. Instead of disconnecting, she was snapped into
a vision. Bombs. Bombs falling from the sky. Screaming people. The end of the world.
Her heart burst into panicked racing. This was not the place she wanted to be. She doubted very much that Pyramid Corp. was actively reminding children of the last days before the world ended.
Instead of reacting, she tried to control The Program as she did when she meditated. She willed herself closer to the children in the L.A. dome.
The scene quickly shifted to one of her inside a deep, dense wood. She recognized the massive trees and redwoods. Being from Colorado, she’d never actually seen them in person, but from pictures she knew how magnificent they were.
She walked through the majestic forest, breathing in the damp scent of moss and ozone. Letting herself mentally rest for a few moments, she watched the birds flit through the tree boughs above her. She smiled, forgetting briefly about all her worries. Relaxation was something Circe had always told her would help.
She heard a branch crack. She snapped her head around in the direction of the sound. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. Something dove into the ferns and underbrush.
Cassie chased it, curious as to what it was. Perhaps it could give her some clues about how to get closer to the children. She willed herself to burst into inhuman speed, gaining quickly on whatever it was she chased.
When it came into sight, she fell back in shock. The young woman looked at her with confused, dark eyes. She’d never had anyone react to her since she’d worked in The Program with other children inside the dome. This girl could see her. She had to be a real person.
“Hi,” Cassie said, knowing they only had a few moments before Pyramid Corp. would be onto them. “I’m Cassie. What’s your name?”
“Magdalena,” she said, tilting her head. The girl looked to be about her own age or a little younger. “What are you doing here? This is my place.”
“This is your place?” Cassie asked. How did this girl have a “place” inside The Program?
“I come here every time they send me inside.”
“And they are all right with that?”
“They don’t know. I’m a hacker. My brother taught me. But he’s gone now.”
“Where did he go?”
“They just said he got another assignment. But I know they used him in one of their experiments.”
“What experiments?”
“The ones they do on the boys.”
“What are they doing?”
“Come. I’ll show you.”
Cassie followed the girl through the woods until they stepped into a clearing. On the other side of the clearing she saw the streets of the dome. Cassie’s mind reeled. She’d never seen anything like it.
“How did you do this?”
“I told you, I’m a hacker. There are a lot of us. I thought you were one, too. Aren’t you?”
“I’m something like that.”
“Cool. Come on.”
Magdalena took Cassie’s hand and led her into the streets of the dome. “Won’t they see us now?” Cassie asked.
“Maybe. We have a few minutes. Hurry.”
They broke into a run straight for the center of the dome where the medical building was located, surrounded by the terminal rooms. They moved through the doors without any effort. The Pyramid Corp. guards took no notice of them as they ran through.
“Come on,” Magdalena yelled.
They ran through the last door and into a brightly lit laboratory. Cassie had seen a lot of horrible things, but she wasn’t ready for what she beheld there. The same tubes she’d seen in her vision of the Anu mother ship held dozens of young boys in various stages of mutation. It looked as if they were metamorphosing into Anu.
“It isn’t just babies they are hybridizing. They are trying to do it with boy children, too.”
“This is why the boys are here,” Magdalena said, her eyes glistening with tears, her mouth set with rage. “Now, get out of here. We have to go. Now!”
“Wait. I need your help. I need you to open the doors to the outside so I can free you.”
“What? When? What about the radiation?”
“Tomorrow night. The radiation is a lie.”
“But how?”
“Wait for my signal. I’ll contact you again. I swear it.”
“We have to go!”
Cassie snapped through space and time and broke through to her consciousness, gasping for air. She sat up on the deck chair and vomited on the ground.
“What happened?” Rafe asked her, holding her hair and rubbing her back as she let go of the last of the contents of her stomach.
“Oh, God. We have to get in there and help them. Those poor children. Now I know what they were feeding the zombies.” She retched again.
“It will be okay, Cassandra. It will be okay. I’m here. Everything is fine now.” Rafe said.
She stood up from the deck chair, staggering out into the bright daylight. She moaned, and people looked up at her from their farm work as if she were crazy.
She felt half crazed. She felt as if her stomach was about to explode. She stumbled toward the farmhouse, not knowing why. Rafe and the others hurried behind her. Bursting into the kitchen, she scared Dina, the maid, half to death before she found water and poured herself a cup, chugging it down.
“Try to tell us what happened,” Rafe said.
Cassie stumbled to the living room and collapsed on the couch. She recounted everything that had happened while she’d been inside The Program—Magdalena, hackers, the experiments with the boys. Gradually, her breathing slowed and her stomach felt less raw.
Emilia handed her a piece of bread to eat while Rafe patted her back. As the illness subsided, firm resolve shot up her backbone, fortifying her like a steel rod.
“How will you contact Magdalena again?” Rafe asked. That was a good question, and Cassie didn’t have an answer.
“I will have to try to spirit-walk to her in her sleep and lead her out the way my mother led me.”
“You have no idea if that girl will be able to see you while in your astral form,” Rafe said.
“I know, but what choice do I have? I’ve found a contact. We’ve gotten this far. I have to assume that working in the fourth dimension has made the children sensitive to it after all this time. We should take the terminal because that will be the frequency she is most used to. All we can do is keep moving forward.”
Rafe sighed and patted her hand. “All right, Cassandra, we’ll keep moving. There is no going back now. We’ve come this far. We have to get those kids out of there.”
“And what then?” asked Spencer, who stood in the corner of the room as if guarding them.
“We’ll lead them back here. This is the best place for them,” said Rafe, ever the protector of the pack.
“What makes you think the Anu won’t bomb us sky high if you try that?”
“You saw what Cassie can do.”
“So be it.”
Spencer walked off to the kitchen, where Dina stood in the doorway wringing her hands. “Who are they bringing here?” the girl asked.
“Children, Dina. Human children,” Spencer said as he brushed past her. Her mouth fell open in shock.
Chapter 64
Rafe helped Cassie stand, and they moved upstairs, where he opened the doors, looking for a bathroom. Finally he found one with Spanish tile and a claw-foot tub.
After he led Cassie inside, he turned on the faucet and put his hand under the water, his eyes glowing with pleasure. “Aw, I knew it,” he said, closing the drain in the tub. “Hot water. You get in there and take a bath, now.”
“Are you bathing with me?”
“No. You need a good long soak. I’ll take a shower after. I’m going to find you a room and some clean clothing. Take your time. I’ll be back.”
He left her as steam rose from the running water. Cassie took a deep breath and let it out fully before stripping out of her clothing. She so needed this. Dipping her toe in the water, she felt that it w
as perfect—almost too hot, just how she liked it.
She slipped into the water and poured in some bath salts that sat next to the tub. They filled the room with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle. She closed her eyes, breathing in the lovely scent and letting the warmth work through her tired, sore muscles.
Too much had happened in the last few days. She’d run the gauntlet, fought zombies, been beaten up by her witch friends, found out Pyramid Corp. was feeding the undead hordes, found out the pack was dead, been taken prisoner, and lost Circe, and now she knew why the Anu had kept boys in the domes.
She tried not to think as the pleasant sensation of warmth penetrated her body and sweetness permeated her lungs. She would just think about now, just be now. That was all she could do.
As the water began to cool, Rafe came back with a bathrobe and a big fluffy towel for her hair. After she got out of the bath, he showed her a room where she could dry off and get under the clean sheets of the big brass bed.
She pulled back the patchwork quilt and got under the covers, still in her bathrobe, as Rafe left the room to shower. There was a stack of clean clothes on the chair next to the window, but she was too tired to try them on. Twilight fell outside and a light breeze fluttered the white lace curtain.
Being in this old-fashioned farmhouse bedroom as fatigue pushed against her consciousness, she could almost imagine none of those horrible things had ever happened. She could almost imagine this was her and Rafe’s house where they raised their children and grew strawberries.
She let the fantasy sink in and take hold as she drifted into a state between sleep and awareness. The door creaked open and footsteps padded across the bare wood floor.
“I’d hoped I’d find you in here,” Rafe said, climbing under the covers. Cassie breathed in the smell of his scrubbed-clean body. The scent of soap and masculinity enveloped her scenes, making her feel calm and safe.