“Before we begin,” Magda says, “I want to be very clear about one thing. I could hire a far more qualified and . . . mature . . . team if I simply wanted someone to go in and ask questions. In fact, I was already planning to do that for the first individual you’ll be interviewing since his situation is a little precarious. You’re being tasked with this partly out of respect for Daniel’s previous efforts but also because you have talents that I think may be more useful in the field than actual investigative experience. At a bare minimum, they’ll allow you to connect with these kids and their parents, because you understand what it means to be an adept. Well, the three of you, at least.” She squints at the camera. “Where is the other boy? Is he still unwell?”
“Deo’s sleeping,” I tell her. “He still has a dangerously high fever. We need to find out what was in the vial I turned over to Sam.”
“We overnighted it to London two days ago,” Michele says. “Did you receive it, Magda?”
“I did. It arrived yesterday. But I haven’t yet been able to reach the . . . acquaintance . . . I mentioned. She travels frequently for work. It could easily be weeks before I hear back.”
Aaron shoots me a worried look and then asks, “Isn’t there anyone else you could contact?”
“No one I would trust to understand the research”—Magda glances between our faces—“or to keep this issue confidential. I’m sure you’re worried about your friend, but it’s entirely possible that he’s simply contracted a normal illness. Temperatures can spike rather dramatically in children.”
“He’s . . . fifteen,” I object. “Well past the age for typical childhood diseases. And the injection site is hot and swollen. Jaden, one of the hitchers Cregg had me pick up in his test, says it’s definitely the serum. He saw similar reactions from others who were being held by Delphi. And Will, one of the other patients they killed—”
I stop, considering exactly what I want to say. If I tell Magda they were testing multiple formulas, will that be more or less likely to light a fire under her to get this specific vial tested? I’m guessing less.
“Will saw the same thing. So we need to get someone to analyze the contents as soon as possible. Maybe you could get her cell number from her employer, or”—I shrug—“something? We can’t just sit here and watch him get sicker.”
“Did anyone die from these injections?” Magda asks.
“Dozens of people died in their custody. We don’t have specifics on the cause of death for most of them, but I think it’s safe to surmise that whatever they gave Deo could be fatal.”
“If he’s not better in two days,” Magda says, “we’ll revisit the issue.”
It’s pretty much what Aaron and I had already decided, barring a significant turn for the worse. But Magda’s tone is harsh and businesslike, and I can’t help but bristle at her cavalier dismissal of Deo’s health.
She continues, either unaware of or unconcerned by my reaction. “I’m wondering, however . . . Perhaps we do have that information. Surely something like fatalities, cause of death, and so forth might be on the portable drive that Daniel smuggled out of the Delphi facility?”
Personally, I think it’s highly unlikely that Cregg’s people would keep a spreadsheet with entries like executed by gunshot or death by experimental injection, but Sam is nodding.
“It’s possible,” he says. “Michele and I discussed that earlier. But the file is encrypted. We’re still working on the password.”
An uncomfortable look flits across Michele’s face, and then I hear banging at the back of my head. Reluctantly, I tug out a brick to let Daniel speak.
What is it, Daniel?
CAQ07122003MAQ.
At first, it seems like gibberish, but then I realize it’s the password.
Ohhh-kay. But exactly how am I supposed to pass along that information without letting them know that you’re here with me instead of there, hooked up to all of those tubes?
Umm . . . yeah. I guess that’s a problem.
Daniel is always so damned sure of himself, so positive that he has all the answers. It’s kind of refreshing to hear him at a loss for a change.
A note. I’ll just tell them you slipped me a note when we were leaving The Warren, and maybe it’s the password.
You think they’ll believe that?
Maybe, maybe not. Do you have a better idea?
When I tune back in to the conversation, Michele is telling Magda that she plans to go back to the house and search Daniel’s room again.
“I don’t think it’s there,” Sam says. “I don’t think it was ever there. We searched the house pretty thoroughly before the break-in . . .”
“The what?” Aaron asks. “When did that happen?”
Michele gives Sam a reproachful look, so I suspect this was something they’d agreed not to tell Aaron and Taylor. It makes me feel a little better that we’re not the only ones keeping secrets.
“Sorry,” Sam says and then proceeds to explain that the Quinns’ home was broken into the day after we left town. “Nothing stolen that we could tell. Just tossed the place pretty thoroughly. I’m guessing they were looking for your dad’s papers, but we moved all of Cole’s research to a safe-deposit box last year.”
“Well, that’s one mystery solved,” Taylor says softly. I’m not sure what she means, then I realize they could have easily taken things that would enable Cregg’s psychic bloodhound to track her and Aaron’s thoughts. A missing sock or two wouldn’t be noticed in the chaos.
Aaron is worried now about his mom’s safety and asks whether they’ve got police watching the hospital and the house.
Magda clears her throat. “Maybe this conversation could continue later? Once I’m off the call? I think the best course of action might be for me to hire someone who can crack the password—
“Wait,” I say. “That may not be necessary. Daniel gave me something. It’s in my backpack. In the bedroom.”
Aaron and Taylor quirk their brows almost in unison. Taylor, being Taylor, looks suspicious. Aaron just looks a little confused as he moves aside to let me squeeze through.
I pull the bedroom door partially shut, wishing I could close it. But that would seem like I’m trying to hide something, so I just grab my backpack and sit against the wall as I rummage around for a pen and a scrap of paper. Daniel repeats the password, but the pen keeps skipping on the too-smooth paper of an old ATM receipt as I write.
I’m on the last digit when Taylor appears in the doorway, startling me.
“What are you doing?”
“This one digit was unclear, so I darkened it. Pretty sure it’s a three, not an eight. This stupid ATM paper smudges.” I realize as I’m saying it that it was a colossally bad choice, since it’s my bank, my account number, my almost nonexistent balance on the front of the receipt.
I don’t wait for Taylor to ask more questions, just push past her into the main cabin where Aaron is telling them about the vision I had earlier.
“But you don’t know exactly where it was happening?” Magda asks.
“Actually, we do,” Aaron says. “We pulled up the intersections near Fort Benning on Street View, and Anna was able to pinpoint what she saw in the vision. Only one family named Peck in that town, and they live less than half a mile from that intersection, so . . .” He trails off, realizing that I’m back and everyone is now looking at me.
Clutching the slip of paper, I slide onto the bench next to him. “Daniel gave me this when we were leaving The Warren. That’s what the kids at the Delphi facility call the place.” I read the numbers off, feeling Taylor’s eyes on me the entire time. “At least, I’m pretty sure that’s a three before the last three letters. Could also be an eight . . . it’s a little smudged.”
“You’ve had this note all along?” Taylor asks. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“Sorry.” I paste on an apologetic smile. “With everything going on, it kind of slipped my mind. And this was the first time anyone told me you were
looking for a password.”
The last bit is at least half true—no one discussed it with me directly, although I vaguely remember Taylor and Aaron talking about it in passing.
“Easy to see how that could happen, under the circumstances,” Sam says. There are general nods of understanding all around, except, of course, for Taylor, who still has one auburn eyebrow cocked in a dead-on imitation of Spock.
“That’s it. I’m in.” Michele flashes us a relieved smile before turning back to her laptop. She scrolls through for a moment while the rest of us wait. “Whoa. There’s a lot here, Magda. I think I should to turn this over to Sam and let him figure out the best way to get the information to you. Then we can reconvene and—”
“No,” Magda says, her tone very much that of someone who is paying the bills. “I mean, yes, do that, but obviously that will take time, and we can’t afford to wait. Can you look now and see if there’s a map? Daniel said there were several epicenters with sightings of second-generation adepts, but I believe the largest one is in North Carolina.”
We wait in silence. Finally, Michele nods. “Found it.” She slides her chair toward the camera and turns her computer screen toward us. The image is just a black-and-white outline of the states, with red dots scattered across, and Incident Report at the top of the page. The resolution isn’t great, and I can’t say how many dots there are in all, but they tend to cluster. Two are on the East Coast—the smaller one near Washington, DC, and the other much larger grouping near the border between North and South Carolina.
“Each of the red dots is someone Cregg’s people think may be connected to Delphi,” Sam says. “Either an original participant they’ve tracked down or a kid who inherited the altered gene. That big red splotch is Fort Bragg and the surrounding area. Daniel was stationed there for about six months. His dad, too. It’s the PSYOP headquarters for the Army, although they’ve got a new acronym now—MISO.”
“Because it makes so much more sense to name the psychological operations HQ after soup,” Taylor mutters. “At least PSYOP made sense.”
Her grandfather ignores the interruption. “I’m not surprised you’d have a cluster of adepts there, since most of the people in the Delphi program probably cycled through Bragg at some point. And when the project at Fort Meade closed down, some of them may have re-upped.”
I hold up my hand in a stop motion.
“Maybe it’s because I’m late to the team, but Delphi didn’t have any reservations about kidnapping the kids they held at The Warren, and I didn’t get the sense they were understaffed or underfunded. If there are adepts wandering around in plain sight, if they have all of these incident reports and so forth, why weren’t Cregg’s people grabbing those kids already?”
Magda begins to answer, but I can barely hear her over the banging at the back of my head. I suspect Daniel’s information is based on actual firsthand evidence, so I opt for once to focus on the internal chatter instead.
They were. Cregg had two field teams in North Carolina up until about a month ago. Ashley said they’d brought in three, maybe four, kids before they called the last team back to The Warren.
Why did they call them back?
No clue. Maybe they were worried about getting caught if there were too many disappearances at once. Or maybe they were worried about having to move additional kids, since that was also about the same time we started hearing rumors that we’d be relocating most of the people at Delphi.
I remember Jaden’s sarcastic use of that word when I picked up his ghost in Cregg’s lab.
So do you mean relocated as in physically moved to another location or relocated as a euphemism for permanently removed?
That was above my pay grade, but I’d guess mostly the former.
Jaden chimes in, agreeing.
Depends on their age. Like I said before, Cregg’s got this weird thing about not killin’ kids. Okay . . . that came out wrong. What I mean is he’s totally down with killin’ an adult when it suits his purposes. Kids get a free pass, though. No matter how dangerous. The Fudds weren’t even supposed to use corporal punishment on them, aside from the taser if some kid got out of control and they couldn’t sedate him. Two Fudds died in the line of duty while I was there, both times due to a kid, so . . .
As Jaden’s voice fades away, Magda’s fades in. “. . . so, obviously, we need to investigate the cases at Fort Bragg immediately.”
“What about the lead in Georgia?” I ask. “I sensed that kid is in danger, and we had her location on the note I was holding. I’m certain of it.”
“That’s just one child, though. There are at least a dozen adepts in the Fort Bragg area. And we don’t know for certain that it’s too late for the six who were abducted.”
“Abducted?”
The look Magda gives me—actually the look that everyone gives me—makes it clear that I missed something while I was focused on Daniel and Jaden.
“Magda just told us that six kids have vanished in the past week,” Sam says. “I saw something on the news this morning, but the headline just said North Carolina, so I didn’t make the connection. Usually I pay more attention to the news, but we’ve been a little preoccupied with Daniel’s condition.”
“Also,” Magda says, clearly annoyed that she’s having to repeat herself, “I have a local source who claims the disappearances are tied to the military program in question. Several of the children who are missing—maybe even all of them—had parents who were given the Delphi drug when they were in the military, before the program was turned over to the CIA in 1995.”
“But if these kids have been abducted and it’s related to Delphi,” I argue, “that means Cregg already has them, right? Unless you think there are others he might be going after in that area right now, wouldn’t it make more sense to first check out the case in Georgia where we have a child who is currently in danger? Then we can focus on finding the new Delphi location and rescuing those kids? I mean, not just the four of us, obviously, but . . .”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Michele says. “We need to back up a bit. Our agreement was that Aaron, Taylor, and the others would be questioning the families, trying to get information on kids who were affected by these experiments. No one said anything about them going into an area where there’s an active, ongoing investigation of kidnappings. I’ve got one son lying here in a hospital bed. I’m not about to let my other two children—”
Taylor starts to protest, but Aaron gives her a look that, for once, silences her.
“Mom,” Aaron says, gently but firmly. “We’ve been over this before. Taylor and I aren’t safe until the entire program and everyone involved in it is exposed. Even if North Carolina is crawling with Cregg’s people, we’re not in any more danger there than we would be at home.”
“But right now, no one even knows where you are, Aaron. You could just wait there until . . .” She trails off, and I think even she recognizes the weak spot in her argument. Wait here until they’ve rounded up all the Delphi kids they can find? Wait here until they find us, too?
Sam squeezes Michele’s arm. “There was a time when I would have agreed with you on this. You know that. I’d have said to step back, turn over our information to the government, and let them investigate. But I don’t trust the current administration any more than I do Ron Cregg’s group. They would exploit these kids in a heartbeat. Aaron knows what he’s doing, and he’ll know if they’re in any danger. He always does. And he’ll get them out of there.”
Magda sighs loudly. “I have no intention of putting anyone in danger. We’ve created a very logical cover story, accompanied by identification to support it. I think the parents will be eager to talk to them, since I’m offering an eventual safe haven for their children and economic assistance to the family in the interim. Money, as they say, talks. But I can hire a security firm to do this instead, if you—”
“No.” Aaron shakes his head emphatically. “We’re on this. We want answers, too.”
“Ve
ry well. Your first interview is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I’ll confirm that and contact you with details once you arrive.” Magda’s eyes turn toward me. “And as for the child in Georgia, Aaron said that these visions from your . . . hitcher . . . always come true. Is that correct?”
“Yes. The events happen exactly as I see them.”
“Then it doesn’t matter when you go to Georgia, does it?” She gives me a tight little smile. “You’ll get that information regardless, so why should we deviate from the plan?”
Her question is clearly rhetorical. She doesn’t wait for an answer but turns her focus to the group as a whole.
“Aside from getting whatever information you can find on the missing children,” she says, “our goal for now is to locate these other adepts, offer financial assistance if needed, and tell them that someone will be in touch shortly. Blood samples would be very helpful—I’m going to need those from the four of you, as well. And I expect you to press for any information you can find on twins. Obviously, that is my top priority, and Daniel mentioned there might be a set of twins in North Carolina.”
Even through the wall, I can sense Daniel’s annoyance. So I pull out the brick again.
What now?
Sorry. I’ll be quieter. It’s just that this is one reason I was reluctant to work with her. Everything else will come second to her personal agenda.
“Transfer the data to me as soon as possible,” Magda says, “so my assistant and I can develop an action plan and cross-reference with the information that we’ve been accumulating for the past year. Oh, and you might want to start looking at options for a safe house. It will need to be large enough for at least fifty people, maybe more.”
“Okay,” Michele says. “Do you have a location in mind? And what is the approximate budget?”
“I’m less concerned with the budget than I am with finding a place that’s therapeutic. These children need sunshine. Fresh air. But it also needs to be somewhat isolated, since the adepts have a variety of talents that could be difficult to hide in an urban setting.”
Michele and Sam assure her that they’ll forward the data and begin searching for a suitable location.