“But I don’t want to be admitted,” Jax protested. “I want to be released.”
“Well, you can’t be discharged until you’ve been admitted,” she reasoned, slapping a pen on top of the stack. “I’ll check on you in a little while.”
As soon as she was gone, Jax shoved the tray away, yanked the IV needle out of his arm, and kicked into his sneakers. The ER was busy; no one was going to notice a twelve-year-old with a bandaged head. His sole worry was his own nurse. Losing a patient with unfinished paperwork was probably a hanging offense at … he didn’t even know which hospital this was.
He was almost home free, the door to the outside ten paces in front of him, when a half-demented voice shouted, “Somebody grab that kid!”
Two large orderlies started toward him, but Jax was already running. He blasted through the waiting room and out the automatic sliders. Blowback still battered and disoriented him, but he was pleased to note that the urgency of the moment was keeping him focused.
He found himself sprinting away from Beth Israel Medical Center, losing himself in the Union Square farmer’s market. Over his shoulder, he saw the orderlies burst out of the building, look around, and turn back to the hospital. Apparently, he wasn’t worth chasing, not even for the crime of un-filled-out forms.
This minor triumph energized him. Finally, something had gone right. Next order of business: Axel Braintree. The president of the Sandman’s Guild had given him a card, but Jax had no idea what he’d done with it. His one connection to the man was the E-Z Wash Laundromat on Seventh Avenue, where the guild held its weekly gatherings.
It was about a fifteen-minute walk from Union Square. He entered the grimy storefront, brushing past the customers and their baskets, and barged into the back room where the meeting had been held.
Empty.
Okay, Jax told himself. You knew this was a long shot. He still has to be somewhere.
Jax had just resolved to return home and turn the apartment upside down looking for Braintree’s business card, when he recognized the very tall woman at dryer number eight. She was a sandman … sandwoman? He’d seen her at the meeting — Evelyn Lolis, the one who used to make her living hypnotizing beauty-contest judges.
He rushed up to her. “I need to talk to Axel Braintree.”
She fed quarters into the machine, never turning to face him. “Do I look like his mother?”
“I know you’re in the Sandman’s Guild. Please, it’s an emergency.”
She regarded him for the first time. “You’re the Opus kid. What do you need Axel for?” She brightened. “You looking for a business partner?”
“It’s about Elias Mako.”
Ten seconds later, she had Braintree on her cell phone, and handed it to Jax.
Buffeted by blowback and embarrassed at how he’d dismissed the man before, Jax blurted out his message: “Mako rigged the election.”
Braintree didn’t ask “How?” or demand any supporting information. His response was immediate, and 100 percent to the point. “Where are you?”
“The Laundromat.”
“Don’t move,” Braintree ordered. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Jax would not have believed how glad he was to see the gray ponytail bouncing in through the Laundromat entrance.
Braintree himself was shocked at the sight of Jax — visibly thinner, very pale, with haunted bloodshot eyes. “What happened to you, kid? What did Mako do to you?”
Jax poured out the whole story, his voice cracking. Hearing the tale from day one was almost worse than living it. At least in reality, it all happened gradually. Recounting it was close to experiencing the entire nightmare in a few minutes.
“Remote hypnotism!” Braintree exclaimed in amazement. “Of course it’s been tried, but no one’s ever succeeded before! This changes everything we thought we knew about what it is to be a sandman!” He frowned. “But why do you look like you’ve just been released from a torture chamber?”
“I haven’t been released,” Jax quavered. “I’m still in it. You know how it kind of saps your strength when you’ve got a mesmeric link with somebody? Well, I’ve got a mesmeric link with everybody who sees that video clip! Hundreds of thousands of people, maybe more!”
“Of course!” Braintree was horrified. “The link would exist regardless of whether or not the hypnotism was performed in person! It must be overwhelming!”
Jax nodded miserably. “It feels like a regular link at first. But then you get so many at the same time that it’s just a blur. Eventually it gets so bad that you can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you can barely walk. At this point, I can’t tell if I feel so awful from the blowback, or the fact that I haven’t had a decent meal or a good night’s sleep in over a week — not to mention the knock on the head I got from falling down the stairs. It’s not good!”
Braintree was alarmed. “You look terrible, but what really concerns me is that what you’re going through is something no one has ever suffered before. We have no idea what the long-term damage might be. Maybe we should take you to a hospital.”
Jax laughed mirthlessly. “I just escaped from one! What we have to do is find a way to stop Mako from hijacking the election, without bringing him down on my folks.”
The old man glanced at the Laundromat clock, which was in the shape of a pair of sweat socks. “The polls close in a few hours. There’s not much we can do to influence the voting now. We can work on thwarting him in the presidential election. But before we can do that, we have to make sure that your parents will be safe.”
Neither of Jax’s parents were answering their cell phones.
Next, Jax tried calling them at work. The receptionist at the Bentley dealership said that Ashton Opus had to leave the office on a family emergency. “His son’s in the hospital, you know.”
Dr. Opus’s chiropractic office had a recorded message explaining that the clinic was closed due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
“They’re at Beth Israel, trying to find me,” Jax concluded. “I’m really not psyched to go back to that place. That nurse is probably still ticked off.”
“Call your parents again,” Braintree instructed. “Leave messages. Have them meet us at home. We have to act before Mako gets his hooks into them.”
As the taxi bore them toward the Opuses’ apartment, Jax had questions for the president of the Sandman’s Guild. “How are we going to help them? Is it possible to undo what Dr. Mako did?”
“One step at a time,” Braintree soothed. “We won’t know that until we get inside their heads.”
“My dad’s going to flip,” Jax groaned. “He’s hated hypnotism his whole life. And my mom’s in total denial. Wait till I show up with you to perform mental explorations and odd jobs.”
“We’ll be as quick as we can,” the old man promised. “I suggest you put your mother under so she’s not alarmed while I’m hypnotizing your father.”
“Aw, I don’t want to see inside my mother’s brain. All those private thoughts and lady stuff. I get skeeved out just looking at her eyelash curler.”
“Courage, Jax. Remember what we’re doing it for.”
The reception at home was overwhelming. Both parents were so relieved to see their son in one piece that any inconvenience and alarm was readily forgotten. Mrs. Opus enveloped Jax in a motherly hug, and Mr. Opus put his arm around his son’s shoulder, whispering, “What’s up with Farmer Ponytail?”
“Mom, Dad, I want you to meet Axel Braintree. He’s … a friend of mine.”
“Not from school, I guess,” said his mother lamely.
“Delighted to meet you.” Braintree handed each parent a business card.
Ashton Opus read, “‘Mental explorations’? Wait — you’re not one of …” He would have said more, but the old man fixed him with a penetrating stare, and he was instantly in a trance.
It was the first time Monica Opus had ever witnessed hypnotism firsthand, and it scared her witless. She snatched up a crystal vase and
wielded it like a weapon. “Get away from my husband, you —”
Jax leaped in front of her and fixed his dark eyes on hers.
“Jackson Howard Opus, don’t you dare —”
That was as far as she got. Her PIP reflected back at him clearer than the chaotic jumble of pictures he continued to receive.
“Hurry up,” he tossed over his shoulder. “When she comes out of it, she’s going to kill me.”
There was no response from the old man, who was deep in a mesmeric link with Mr. Opus. Jax may have had the stronger natural gift, but he had never seen a hypnotist so completely focused as Braintree. His attention shone like an interrogator’s lamp on Dad, who seemed to be answering quietly. The head sandman had devoted his life and his guild to resisting the temptation to bend people. It was plain, though, that when he did it, he could be extremely good at it.
But is he good enough to undo the deadly suggestion Mako planted inside Dad? Is something like that even possible?
If this was unsuccessful, the consequences would be dire. And not just for Mom and Dad. For the first time, his thoughts turned to the terrible state of his own health — drawn and pale, gaunt and anxious. And who knew what was causing it all?
He pulled himself up short. Wait a minute! He knew exactly what was causing his current predicament!
These weren’t his thoughts; they were Mom’s! He was starting to pick up her emotions through the mesmeric link! The last thing a guy needed was to know his mother’s innermost feelings.
He tried to close his mind a little, but felt the link wavering, so he abandoned that idea. Fine. If he couldn’t keep out his mother’s thoughts, at least he could distract himself so he wouldn’t have to receive them.
O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed —
This patriotic anthem was interrupted by Braintree tapping him on the shoulder. Dad was waiting patiently, eyes half-closed, in hypnotic neutral.
“Well?” Jax hissed.
“I know what we’re up against.” The old man took a deep breath. “It’s nasty, even for Mako.”
Jax was deflated. “I was kind of hoping he was just bluffing.”
“I won’t mention the trigger word yet. It’s too dangerous. When they hear it, both your parents will proceed to the nearest subway station and throw themselves in front of an uptown train.”
Jax was overcome with rage and terror in the same instant. “What kind of monster comes up with something like that?”
“I told you, Dr. Mako is not what he seems. Except to me. To me he’s always been unacceptable.”
Unacceptable was not the term Jax would have chosen. “But you fixed it, right? Now we just have to do the same thing to Mom.”
The president of the Sandman’s Guild shook his head grimly. “I don’t like Elias Mako, but his understanding of the inner machinery of the human mind is unparalleled. This cannot be fixed in the way you mean it.”
Jax was appalled. “Why not? Can’t we just put in a suggestion of our own? You know — when you hear the trigger word, don’t jump in front of a subway train?”
“This is no simple hypnotic trick,” Braintree explained. “Mako has managed to ingrain the suggestion into the basic foundation of your father’s sense of himself. Even more dangerous, he seems to have built in a safeguard against any countersuggestion we might make. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but if we try to override Mako’s handiwork, it might have the reverse effect of setting it all off.”
Jax was in a panic. “You mean there’s nothing we can do? That means I’m Mako’s slave forever or else my parents die!”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” the old man assured him. “If all the conditions of Mako’s hypnotic command can be met, then the suggestion will disappear. You can only die once, after all.”
Jax was distraught. “But they’ll be dead!”
“The art of suggestion is very literal,” Braintree lectured. “That’s why sandmen make lousy Little League coaches. You tell a kid to steal a base, and he sticks it under his shirt and runs for the parking lot.”
The link with Mrs. Opus was flickering in and out. If Jax didn’t concentrate, she’d be awake in a moment, and none too pleased with her son.
“But how could anybody misinterpret throw yourself in front of a train?” Jax challenged.
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
“The last person I trusted was Mako.”
“I’m not Mako.”
“No,” Jax agreed. “You’re a convicted art thief who holds self-help meetings in a Laundromat.”
“But do you trust me?” Braintree persisted.
And Jax was amazed to discover that he did.
The first part of Braintree’s plan was to start the Opuses on the path to killing themselves. In other words, they had to deliberately trigger Dr. Mako’s post-hypnotic suggestion.
Even though Jax accepted that this was the only way to defuse the time bomb inside his parents, it was an agonizing decision. After all, at this moment, Mr. and Mrs. Opus were just fine. The notion of setting them on a course designed to murder them — on purpose — was unimaginably terrifying.
“You do it,” Jax told Braintree. “I might not have the guts.”
The two sandmen brought Jax’s parents out of their hypnotic state. Jax was still so disoriented by blowback that he neglected to instruct his mother to forget recent events, and she came back to herself still angry. “How dare you bring this witch doctor into our home and set him on your father? Just because you happen to have a talent for hypnotism, it doesn’t give you the right to …”
He was so cowed by her onslaught that he overcame his fear and nodded to Braintree to give the trigger word. It might be the only way to stop her diatribe.
“Lusitania,” the old man announced, enunciating carefully.
Jax had expected at least a thunderclap and frantic action from Mom and Dad. But it was all very civilized. Mrs. Opus straightened her hair and picked up her pocketbook. Her husband adjusted his tie. Wordlessly, the Opuses shrugged into their jackets and headed out of the building to die.
Jax and Braintree followed a few steps behind them.
“I can’t believe they’re so calm about it,” Jax whispered. “Like they’re going out to pick up a loaf of bread.”
Braintree nodded. “The response to a post-hypnotic suggestion is always very businesslike.”
“Yeah, but they’re going to kill themselves!”
“They’re responding to a series of specific instructions,” Braintree amended. “And that’s how we’ll save their lives.”
A neighbor greeted Jax’s parents as they crossed the street at the corner. The Opuses looked right through her and kept on walking. There was a tense moment at the next intersection when a changing light separated the couple, and Braintree and Jax hesitated, unsure of who would stick with whom. In the confusion, Mr. Opus ended up a block ahead, with both sandmen tailing his wife. Frantic, Jax sprinted ahead, reacquiring the faint bald spot that was his father. A stalled delivery truck snarled pedestrian traffic, allowing Mrs. Opus and Braintree to catch up.
Jax could see it at the end of the block — the entrance to the Canal Street subway station. He swallowed hard, willing himself to concentrate through his continuing whirlwind of mesmeric images. Whatever was going to happen, it would happen there.
“Stick with your father, no matter what,” the old man commanded. “I’ll look after your mom.”
Jax could feel a lump of ice in his stomach as he watched his parents descending the concrete steps into the station. It looked so ordinary and everyday that it was hard to accept what was coming. Jax was used to hypnotism now, even good at it. But nothing could have prepared him for this life-and-death moment.
The Opuses swiped their cards and entered the station, Braintree following close behind them. Jax made for the turnstile …
And froze.
At this critical instant, every move planned down
to split seconds, a dumb mistake was tipping the scale toward tragedy. His MetroCard was on his dresser at home! His eyes darted to the fare booth; there was a long line. By the time he got through, at least one of his parents would be gone.
Without hesitation, Jax vaulted over the barrier and ran for the flight of stairs down to the platform. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back. He spun around to face a burly transit cop.
“What’s the matter, kid? You’re too special to pay your fare like everybody else?”
“I — I — I —” A plea was forming in his throat, but at that moment, he felt the earthquake-like rumble of a train approaching the station. Even if he could come up with the right words, there’d be no time to save Mom and Dad!
He stared at the man with laser-straight intensity, trying to conjure centuries of Opus and Sparks history into one mesmeric blast. The cop recoiled slightly, and then sagged, motionless. Jax shrugged out of his grasp and sprinted for the stairs. As he flung himself off the bottom step, he could feel the blast of air coming from the tunnel just ahead of the train. The sight he beheld nearly stopped his heart.
Mom stood on the yellow safety stripe, poised for flight. Braintree was right behind her, looking around wildly for Jax. His desperation needed no explanation. He could save one, but not both.
Heart hammering, Jax scoured the platform. At that instant, he was aware of no blowback. The entire universe had been distilled to a single, vitally important question: Where’s Dad?
The squeal of brakes from the oncoming train was deafening now. The headlights raked across the station.
At the very last instant, Jax spied the familiar bald spot, standing at the edge about twenty feet beyond Mom.
Jax took a mad dash in the direction of his doomed father. The front of the train burst out of the tunnel. Dad crouched slightly, preparing his jump.
“No-o-o-o!”
Jax left his feet in a flying tackle. As he clamped both arms around his father’s midsection, he felt Dad’s momentum pulling both of them over the edge. Still in midair, he heaved away from the onrushing train. The two of them hit the concrete, rolling back from the gap as hundreds of tons of metal screamed into the station. Out of the corner of his eye, as his cheek struck the platform, he caught sight of Braintree, a screaming Monica Opus locked up against a trash bin.