“Nightshade will guess it was Arcane,” Jack said. “But do you care?”
“It’s not Nightshade I’m worried about. They’ve got to know we’re the folks who took down those labs. The problem with burning down the gyms would be arson investigators. We do not need that kind of attention from the authorities.”
“The drawback to being a clandestine organization. Okay, so what are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking about that,” Fallon said. “At this point Nightshade doesn’t know that we’ve identified three of their recruiting centers. They haven’t even closed down the one on Capitol Hill where they held you for twenty-four hours.”
“That’s because they’re depending on the amnesia drug they gave me to keep my memories suppressed.”
“Lucky for us. I’ve got a couple of low- end auras watching the gym there in Seattle. We’ll see what turns up.”
“Are you going to try to get someone inside?”
“That’s not an option,” Fallon said, flat and unequivocal. “In order to do that an agent would have to subject himself to the formula. I can’t allow anyone to take that risk.”
“Maybe you can turn one of the Nightshade agents.”
“Even if that were possible, he or she wouldn’t be reliable. Like I said, there are serious personality changes with the drug. But with luck we’ll get something useful from plain, old-fashioned surveillance on the gyms. The problem with surveillance is that it takes people, a lot of people. I don’t have an unlimited number of agents to throw at this thing. Look, I’ve got to make some calls. Get back to me after you and Chloe have talked to your friend, Jerry.”
“Sure.” He waited for Fallon to end the connection with his customary abruptness. Instead there was silence on the other end.
“Fallon? Still there?”
“Yeah. I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“About how long it’s been since you and I went out for a beer. Maybe when this is over you and Chloe might want to take a little vacation. A long weekend or something.”
“What does taking a vacation have to do with you and me going out for a beer?”
“You two could spend a couple of days here in Scargill Cove. Very picturesque place. You’d like it here. Weather’s just like Seattle. Gray.”
The phone went dead. Jack took it away from his ear and looked at it, wondering if he’d heard correctly. Had Fallon just invited him for a visit?
He shelved the question for another time and went back to contemplating the leaden sky. The tension within him was drawing tighter. He recognized it now because he’d experienced a similar sensation once before. It was the same restless, uneasy feeling that had hit him the night that Chloe had conducted the stakeout at Fletcher Monroe’s house.
48
SHE AWAKENED TO THE MUFFLED CLANK AND THUD OF MACHINERY and a low moan. The latter was not a cry for help. It was the quiet anguish of a man who has given up all hope and longs only for death. The pitiful sound drew her up out of the darkness.
She opened her eyes and immediately closed them against the blinding glare of fluorescent lights.
“Ah, you’re awake, Miss Harper. Excellent.”
Cautiously she opened her eyes again but only partway this time. A thin, bony man in a rumpled white lab coat was leaning over her, studying her through a pair of black- framed glasses. The thick lenses gave his eyes an unpleasant, faceted look. His bald head gleamed like an exoskeleton in the harsh light.
“Who are you?” she whispered. Her voice sounded slurred, as if she’d had too much to drink.
“Doctor Humphrey Hulsey,” he said. His insectoid eyes glittered with excitement. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Harper.”
Squinting against the glary light she looked around the windowless room. White walls, the gleam of stainless-steel trays and counters, a guy in a lab coat and she was lying on a gurney. She knew this scene. It was straight out of Jack’s memories of the place where he had been held prisoner.
Her head was clearing, but she felt uncomfortably warm. Her skin was so sensitive that the sheet that covered her was a source of pain. It dawned on her that she was running a fever. So much for the flu shot she had taken last month.
“Not a hospital,” she whispered.
“No, Miss Harper,” Hulsey said. “You’re not in a hospital. You’re in a research facility.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Must be a pretty low-rent research facility. Smells like a basement.”
“Yes, well, sometimes those of us on the cutting edge of science must make do with less than state-of-the-art equipment and technology. Funding is always a problem, you see.”
Another weak moan rumbled through the wall behind her. The pain in the cry roiled her senses.
“Who is that?” she managed.
“His name is Larry Brown, I believe. I think of him as Subject A.”
“What on earth is wrong with him?”
“I’m afraid that he’s feeling some of the side effects of his treatment. I’ve made several modifications to the formula in recent months, but it is still quite unpredictable, especially when used in the higher doses required to induce additional talents.”
“The formula.” Anger surged through her, giving her strength. She pushed herself up on her elbows, vaguely surprised to discover that she was still wearing the clothes that she had worn to meet with Barbara Rollins. She was not shackled to the gurney. Evidently no one considered her potentially dangerous or likely to escape. “You’ve pumped him full of the founder’s drug.”
“It wasn’t as if someone held him down and forced him to take the drug, I assure you,” Hulsey said. “Subject A was a volunteer. That is the wonderful thing about my research projects. There is no lack of individuals who will do just about anything in exchange for a drug that will give them genuine psychic talents or enhance the ones they already have.”
Larry Brown groaned again. She shuddered and then couldn’t seem to stop shivering.
“And you call yourself a doctor,” she said, disgusted. “So much for the first do-no-harm rule.”
Hulsey was clearly affronted. “I am a research scientist. I come from a long line of talents endowed with a gift for science that can only be described as preternatural.”
“Oh, right, that makes it okay to poison people.” Her upper arm ached. Whoever had dumped her on the gurney had not been gentle.