I could tell Olivia was both embarrassed and touched as we all sat down in a circle of chairs around her and Kaylee handed her the first card.
“It’s from Passion and Samantha,” Olivia said as she opened it, her eyes scanning the inside. “It says, ‘We’re glad you were born. We never would have met without you.’”
“It’s true,” Passion said. “And we owe you a lot more than that.”
“And I want you to know,” Samantha said. “I will do everything in my power to get your father’s work back for you. Even if it means I have to wait to inherit it, you’re getting it back.”
“Thank you,” Olivia said, setting the card aside.
Next came a card from Reiny, Lonan, and Pete, again handmade with messages from each of them.
Grant’s card was next, which she read silently, giving him a tender smile.
Was there something between the two of them? Grant had been a captive with her in the CAMFer compound, and that kind of shared experience created an unbreakable bond. I mean, it was obvious he had a thing for her, but was she into him?
Kaylee handed her another envelope from the hackers with the inscription, “Happy Birthday to The One.” Apparently, it was some kind of inside joke.
Then, there was a gift from her mother, meticulously wrapped. Inside was a small painted portrait of Olivia and her dad sitting on a green hillside together bathed in the glow of the setting sun.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, barely choking out the words.
“He made me save it for you,” her mother said, tears in her eyes. “He was trying to capture what he thought you’d look like as a grown woman. He hated that he was going to miss that.”
“But how did it survive the fire?” Olivia asked.
“I kept it at my office,” her mother explained. “I knew you’d find it if I’d kept it at the house. And since then, I’ve carried it in my purse. I wasn’t going to lose it.”
“Thank you,” Olivia said, a tender, intimate look passing between them.
Kaylee was up again, presenting Olivia with a lumpy, hefty, poorly wrapped present, obviously from her based on the look of utter delight on her face.
“It’s from Kaylee,” Olivia confirmed, smiling and tearing into the wrapping paper with gusto, revealing the two silver cubes we’d bought from Gordon as well as Kaylee’s magic eight ball nestled between them.
Olivia stared down at the gifts in her lap. Then she looked up at Kaylee. “Where did you get these?” she asked, her voice gone cold and hard.
Kaylee took a step back, the smile fading from her face, her eyes latched onto the eight ball.
Shit. This wasn’t good.
“Reiny and Lonan’s uncle had the cubes,” I jumped in, hoping to salvage the moment. “He found them in the desert. And the eight ball displaced with Kaylee and me. She didn’t mean to upset you. She’s never done a birthday before, so she gave you the things she values most.”
“The eight ball displaced with you?” Olivia asked, sounding shocked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Suddenly, Kaylee reached out and touched Olivia’s arm, mind-speaking to her.
The ball followed David, Kaylee said, because you put his memories inside to keep them safe. And I brought you the cubes so you could restore them to him, but something is wrong. The ball has gone all blurry since I wrapped it, and I don’t know why.
“What?” Olivia and I both blurted at the same time.
“What’s going on?” Olivia’s mother asked in alarm. “What’s she saying?”
“She said David’s memories are inside the eight ball,” Palmer explained. “But something’s wrong with it now.”
“I knew it!” Passion blurted, looking at Samantha. “I told you there was something weird about that eight ball.”
“But I didn’t put Marcus’s memories in there,” Olivia insisted. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. I pulled that ball from some CAMFer soldier at the Eidolon out of desperation. And when I saw it wasn’t a weapon, I tossed it into the river. Oh, shit.” Her eyes flashed to me. “You were in the river, and I grabbed for something to save you. To save us.”
I found myself staring at the eight ball. Could it be true? Had Olivia somehow preserved my memories and Kaylee and I had been carrying them around with us all this time? If so, did I even want them back—these memories of horrible things? Did I want to remember being someone who’d led his sister and his friends to the slaughter at the hands of the CAMFers? Olivia was obviously a much better leader to them than I’d ever been. And then there was the whole issue of loving her. I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that maybe I’d been using her. What if that’s what I remembered? What if that’s the person I became again when those memories were restored?
“Kaylee, what do you mean they’ve gone blurry?” Palmer asked.
The ball doesn’t look right, Kaylee said, taking it out of Olivia’s hand and turning it this way and that. Something is distorting its resonance. I can’t even see if the memories are still there or not.
“Samantha,” Palmer said, turning to her. “What do you hear? Does the ball sound different than before?”
“I—I can’t hear it,” Samantha said, glancing from Passion to Olivia. “There’s been some kind of interference blocking my ability since we came to Umatilla. But this morning when I woke up, the static in my ear had changed. It’s louder now and more tonal—like a hum. I was going to tell you after the party,” she said to Olivia.
“I’ve run some scans of the building and surrounding areas,” Chase said, “but I haven’t found the source of the interference.”
“If they don’t measure PSS resonance, you wouldn’t,” Palmer said. “But we might be able to modify something in the CAMFers’ arsenal of tools that could trace it.”
“I’m sure you could,” Mrs. Black stepped up, putting her arm around Kaylee and glancing at Olivia. “But right now, why don’t we let Olivia open her last present while I get the cake.”
Palmer nodded and sat back down. Olivia set the cubes on the present table and Kaylee laid the eight ball next to them. Mrs. Black nodded, smiling at everyone, and left to retrieve the cake while Olivia picked up the large flat package wrapped in black plastic garbage bags. I guess we all just wanted to guard that one bastion of normalcy, to sit and enjoy a birthday party like normal everyday people.
“That’s from Kaylee and me both,” I said as Olivia began to unwrap the painting. “I found it in the desert, near the compound’s old location. I guess it never displaced.”
Olivia pulled away the last layer of garbage bag and stared at her father’s portrait of Kaylee. Then she looked up, pinning me with her eyes, some deep, indiscernible emotion swimming in them. “Thank you,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “Thank you both.” She smiled at Kaylee.
After that, it was one of those awkward moments at a party when the hostess has stepped out and nobody knows exactly what to do. T-dog and Chase tried to lighten the mood by recounting one of their humorous hacking adventures, but it quickly became clear the rest of us didn’t have enough technical knowledge to understand most of it, let alone the punchline.
When ten minutes or so had passed, and Olivia’s mom still hadn’t returned with the cake, Passion and Samantha went off to see what was taking her so long.
The rest of us got up, stretched our legs, and made small talk.
I don’t know if I heard the yelling and pounding of footsteps first, or if Palmer did, but I saw him reach for his gun as I turned toward the sound.
Passion and Samantha came charging through the door and it banged shut behind them.
“She’s gone,” Passion panted, looking terrified “Olivia’s mom is gone.”
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Olivia asked, pale as a ghost.
“There are signs of a struggle in the kitchen,” Samantha said. “The cake is smeared all over and there are boot prints in the icing.”
“Was there any
blood?” Palmer asked, putting his gun away, but I could still tell he was wired for combat.
“I don’t think so,” Passion shook her head. “We didn’t see any.”
“Good.” Palmer turned to Chase. “Whoever took her, they’re probably still on the Hold side. Get to the security room, check all the camera feeds, and try to get a visual. Marcus and Lonan, you’re coming to the armory with me. Every one of you should have been armed a long time ago. Peter and Reiny, I want you in the infirmary working on some kind of sedative or lachrymatory agent we could use to gas a room. T-dog, as soon as we’re gone, lock the dome down tight. The rest of you stay here and make yourselves useful. This dome is still the most secure location in the compound.”
Mike, I can find her faster than the cameras, Kaylee mind-spoke. You know I can.
“No,” Palmer snapped at her. “It’s too dangerous.”
But she was already moving, running toward the door of the dome leading to the Hold side.
It was closed, but she didn’t bother opening it. She just faded to a pale blue outline and passed right through, disappearing from sight.
32
KAYLEE
I hadn’t waited my whole life to be reunited with my mother, only to have someone snatch her away from me. This compound was my home. My realm. In the few weeks after I’d discovered my ability to phase through solid objects, I’d explored both sides thoroughly, and I’d done most of it at night while avoiding the camera feeds. Ultimately, though, I suppose, that’s what had gotten me in trouble. At some point, the CAMFers must have caught me on camera and told Dr. Fineman. That is when I’d become too much of a liability for them to keep around.
Now, they’d taken my mother. At least, someone had, and my ability was our best chance for finding her as quickly as possible, no matter what Mike said.
So, I disobeyed him.
I ran for the dome door and phased through it.
First, I went to the kitchen, but I found nothing but smeared cake and a few boot prints, just as Passion and Samantha had described.
After that, it only took me about ten minutes to search the entire Hold side. I stuck my head in every room, every closet, every nook and cranny. It’s amazing how fast you can move through a building when walls and doors and floors are no longer barriers.
But my mother and whoever had taken her were nowhere to be found.
I even stuck my head out one of the outer doors, but all of them were heavily alarmed and we’d heard nothing, no evidence that someone might have escaped through one. No, they had to be inside still, but where?
There was only one logical explanation—if they weren’t on the Hold side, somehow they’d made it to the CAMFer side. Perhaps, when we’d all been paying attention to Olivia opening that last present, my mother’s captor had dragged her through the dome without being seen.
I flew back toward the dome, phasing through everything in my path.
When I slipped through the door, I caught the quick look of surprise on my sister and her friends’ faces as I whipped by, passing through to the CAMFer side. They would understand what that meant. They would have Chase look on this side now, and Mike, Lonan, and David wouldn’t be far behind me.
I moved methodically and carefully, phasing from room to room and floor to floor. The CAMFers had more underground levels than The Hold. The building went darker and deeper, and there were more places to hide like the prison blocks and the morgue.
I’d been to the morgue before, once, when one of the CAMFers had told me my sister had killed someone. I’d phased there that night and found an old cut up man in a metal drawer. Of course, it was obvious to me right away that he hadn’t been killed by Olivia’s PSS. He’d been killed by his own. Then, much later in Gordon’s house, I’d felt his resonance again, pulsing from a box in the den. When I’d snuck into that room and gripped that knife, I’d finally understood what had happened. Dr. Fineman had warped it’s resonance so much, it had turned on its owner.
No, my sister wasn’t a killer. Nor was I.
Even so, as I phased into the lowest level of the CAMFer compound, I took out that knife—the one Gordon had found in the desert—the dangerous, twisted thing from inside Major Tom—and I slipped it up my right sleeve, the handle firmly cupped in my palm the way Mike had taught me to hold a knife. As long as it had contact with me, it would phase with me, and back again.
I checked all the cells, quickly, efficiently. And then I heard muffled voices drifting from down the hall. A softer voice, pleading. A deeper voice, responding.
I raced down the corridor as fast as I could, and stood outside the morgue, pressing my ear against its door.
“If your minus bitch of a daughter doesn’t stop whatever it is she’s doing, I’m gonna kill you,” the deep voice said. “Do you want to die, or are you gonna help me stop her?”
“I wouldn’t help you, even if I could,” my mother replied, her voice soft and strained, but strong. “I’ve never been able to make my daughter do anything, so good luck with that.”
“You think this is a joke?” the deep voice asked, vicious and angry. “Let me prove to you how serious I am.”
I heard a scuffle of movement and a whimper of pain.
I didn’t think.
I felt no fear.
I phased through the door and flew at the back of the man looming over my mother, my knife raised.
I don’t know how he knew I was coming, but he did. Just as I changed to solid form, he turned, putting up his right arm to block my blow, and I saw the knife in his left hand, sweeping up toward my belly.
“Kaylee!” my mother cried.
I reacted just in time. His arm and his knife went through me, his momentum carrying him staggering to my right and crashing into the metal morgue drawers built into the wall, something strapped to his back clanging against them.
I went solid and sank my knife into his side.
He cried out and swung toward me, but I was already gone, a mere wisp in the air, a ghost of a girl hanging between him and my mother.
I could see the absolute terror in his eyes as they took in my ethereal form. I had seen him before, of course, my sister’s cruel guard, Anthony, though he’d lost a hand since then. He was afraid of me, and that was good. So afraid, in fact, that he stumbled back, clutching at the knife in his side and pressing himself against the crumbling cement wall, stumbling on a fallen stone rather than take his eyes from me.
I was completely unarmed. Still, he’d literally have to go through me to get to my mother now, and I doubted he was willing to do that.
Suddenly, Mike, Lonan, and David were at the door, rushing in and pointing guns at him. Behind them, in the hallway, I could see my sister, her frightened eyes taking it all in.
“Drop the weapon,” Mike yelled. “Put your hands up.”
Anthony slowly raised his arms and let his knife drop to the floor.
“Search him,” Mike told Lonan. Then he turned to David and said, “Help Mrs. Black. Get her out of here.”
He has a weapon on his back, I told Mike, returning to material form as David came and helped my mother up. She was bleeding from a shallow cut on her neck and another on her cheek, but other than that, she seemed uninjured. The two of them headed toward the door and slipped out into the hallway where my sister put her arm around our mother and led her away.
“Check his back,” Mike relayed to Lonan. “Kaylee says he has a weapon there.”
Lonan had already deposited several more knives on the floor, but when he grabbed Anthony to turn him around, Anthony didn’t budge.
“Don’t be a fool,” Mike warned, moving closer, his gun raised, as Lonan tried to yank Anthony from the wall a second time to no avail.
“I’m—not—doing it,” Anthony grimaced, clutching at the knife in his side which seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper. “Something—is—pulling me,” he gasped, obviously straining to move away under his own power.
“He’s telling the truth,?
?? Lonan confirmed, trying to slip his hand between Anthony and the wall. “It’s this thing on his back. It’s adhered to the stone or something.”
“Please,” Anthony panted. “Pull—the knife—out.”
Lonan reached down and clutched the handle of the knife, his muscles straining.
Slowly and bloodily, inch by inch, the knife emerged from Anthony’s wound, but as soon as Lonan had it free, it sprang from his hand, flying through the air and sticking point first into an eroding crack between two cement blocks just to the right of Anthony’s head. And then it began to drill, carving its way into the wall, mortar dust crumbling as it went.
“What the fuck?” Mike stared at it. “Kaylee?” he turned to me, an eyebrow raised.
It’s not me, I said. I have no idea why it’s doing that. But the knife’s resonance is blurry, just like the eight ball’s, except much worse. I could see that even as it carved deeper and deeper, the blade spiraling into the hole it was making.
“Please,” Anthony begged. “Get me off this wall.”
“Plug his wound with this,” Mike told Lonan, tossing him a handkerchief from his pocket. “Then cut that strap and let’s get him out of here.”
Lonan handed the handkerchief to Anthony to apply to his own wound. Then he picked up a knife from the floor and sliced carefully at the black plastic, freeing Anthony from the wall.
When they moved away, I gasped.
Embedded into the deteriorating cement was the PSS knife Dr. Fineman had created out of Passion’s blades. I could see it was the knife even though its resonance was blurred and distorted. But that wasn’t what surprised me the most. Leaking through the cracks and holes in the wall surrounding it, was a radiant blue glow, a spectrum of PSS resonance like I’d never seen before.
There’s something on the other side, I told Mike, taking a step toward that light. It’s pulling the knives. Was it my imagination or was it pulling me too? My body wanted to go there as if the space behind the wall was my new center of gravity.
“Stay back,” Mike warned, grabbing my arm. “We need to get out of here.”
Lonan shoved Anthony in front of him, out into the corridor, and Mike pulled me gently with him, closing the door behind us.