The Strange Power

Chapter 13

Marisol remained in a coma. No one outside her family was allowed to visit her, but Joyce called every day. Every day the news was the same: no change.
Mr. Zetes visited the Institute several times, always unexpectedly. They kept their secrets from him, too-or at least, Kaitlyn was pretty sure they did. Occasionally, when she saw Mr. Z's penetrating dark eyes lingering on Gabriel, she wondered.
Gabriel himself was . . . disturbing. Disturbed. Not taking things well.
For Kaitlyn, even though this new intimacy was strange and terrifying, it was exciting, too. She'd never been so close to other people in her life. The sparkling enthusiasm of Lewis's thoughts-the cool serenity of Anna's-that was good. And the closeness to Rob was almost painful delight.
But for Gabriel, it was all torture. He spent every minute of his free time reading journals and books, trying to find a way to break the web. He convinced Joyce he was simply interested in researching his talent, and she was delighted. She let him go to the library and get more books, more journals.
He didn't find anything helpful. And every day he didn't, he withdrew further from the others. He learned how to wall himself off telepathically so that Kaitlyn could barely sense his presence.
We're trying to leave you alone, she told him. And it was true, they were, because they were all worried.
Gabriel seemed to be getting wound tighter and tighter, like something waiting to explode.
On Tuesday, one week after the web was established, Joyce tested Kaitlyn with the EEG machine again.
Kaitlyn had been waiting for this. I think she's going to do it, she told Rob. They had gotten pretty good at sending messages to specific people.
I can come in any time you want, he said. But what do you want me to do-just try to watch her?
Kaitlyn debated as she followed Joyce's instructions to sit down and close her eyes. No-if there's anything she doesn't want you to see, she won't let you
watch. Could you make a distraction when I tell you to? It only needs to last a minute.
Yes, Rob said simply.
Now that Marisol wasn't there to help, Joyce had stopped testing Gabriel at all, and usually sent Rob and a volunteer to the back lab while the other three did their testing in the front. Rob was there now with Fawn, the girl who had MS. Kaitlyn could feel him waiting, alert and vigilant.
"Right; you know how to do this," Joyce said, sticking a final electrode in place-in the center of Kaitlyn's forehead. Over her third eye. "I'll concentrate on the picture. You relax."
Kait murmured something, concentrating on the feel of that single electrode. Cold. It was definitely colder than all the others, and her forehead had a prickling feeling.
When she relaxed, letting her mind fall into darkness, she knew what to expect.
It came. First the feeling of incredible pressure behind her forehead. It turned into a feeling of inflation, like a balloon being blown up. Then came the pictures.
They flashed through her mind with bewildering speed, and she could only recognize a few. She saw roses and a horse. She saw Mr. Zetes in front of the hidden doorway again. She saw a white house with a caramel-colored face in the window.
And-unexpectedly-she heard voices.
Anna's voice: Kait-I can't think-what's happening?
Lewis's: Jeeeeeeeez.
Rob's: Just hang on, everybody.
At the same time, to Kait's astonishment, she could clearly hear Gabriel. What the hell is this? What are you trying to do?
She forced herself to ignore the distracting pictures. Gabriel, where are you?
Just coming up on Exmoor Street.
Kaitlyn was amazed. Exmoor Street was blocks away from the Institute. They'd found that their telepathy fell off sharply with distance, and anything more than a block was too far for clear communication.
But Gabriel was clear now-painfully clear.
I'll explain later, Kait told him. Just try to deal with it for a few minutes. Then she told Rob, Now.
Immediately she heard a thud, and then Fawn's voice shouting. "Joyce! Oh, please-Rob's hurt!"
Kaitlyn remained perfectly still, eyes shut. She heard a rustle on the other side of the screen, then Anna's voice saying, She's going. She's in the back lab now.
Kaitlyn opened her eyes, reaching up to her forehead. The little electrode came away easily, but something remained behind. She could feel it with her fingertips, something stuck to her skin by the electrode cream.
Carefully, her heart beating violently, she peeled it off.
When she looked at it, pinched between thumb and forefinger, she got a shock of disappointment. It wasn't anything after all-just a lump of white electrode cream. Then her fingernails scraped at it and she saw that beneath the coating of paste was something hard. It was white, too, or translucent, which made it
difficult to see. It was about the size and shape of her little fingernail, and quite smooth and flat.
It looked like crystal.
All this time she could hear faint voices in the other room. Now Rob said, Watch out, Joyce is standing up.
Quickly Kaitlyn stuck the small crystal back onto her forehead. She jammed the electrode on over it, praying they both would stay.
She's coming back, Lewis reported.
Here she is, Anna said.
Kait rubbed the telltale paste from her fingers onto her jeans. She picked up the pencil and clipboard and began to draw. It didn't matter what. She sketched a rose.
The folding screen was moved. "Kaitlyn, I'm going to unhook you," Joyce said in a rapid, harassed voice.
"Rob's completely collapsed-I think he's overdone things with that girl. Anna, Lewis, can you help get him to the couch here? I want him to lie down for a while."
Kaitlyn held still, fingers curled because she was guiltily aware that there was still electrode cream under her fingernails. She was relieved that Joyce didn't seem to notice anything peculiar about the forehead electrode. What Kaitlyn noticed, though, was that after taking that one off, Joyce's hand went quickly to her shirt pocket. As if palming something and putting it away.
Rob, you okay? Kaitlyn asked, as Lewis and Anna helped him in, and Joyce turned to settle him on the couch.
She got the mental impression of a wink. Just fine. Did you see anything?
A crystal, Kait told him. We need to talk about this, try to figure it all out.
Rob said, Sure thing. Just as soon as she lets me get up.
"Before you go, what did you draw?" Joyce asked, looking up as Kait headed for the door.
Kaitlyn got the clipboard and showed her the rose picture.
"Oh, well-better luck next time. It was supposed to be a horse. I'm sorry we had to interrupt your testing."
"It doesn't matter," Kaitlyn said. "I'm going upstairs to get this electrode stuff out of my hair." Silently she added, We'd better meet before dinner.
She went upstairs. She wanted to think, but somehow her head seemed cloudy, her thoughts slow.
Rob's voice came to her. Kaitlyn-are you feeling okay?
Kaitlyn started to answer, and then realized just how she was feeling. Oh, Rob, I'm stupid. I forgot what happened to me last time she did this.
She could sense revelation and sympathy from Lewis and Anna, but Rob put it into words. A headache.
A bad one, Kaitlyn admitted. It's coming on fast and getting worse.
Rob's frustration was almost palpable. And I'm stuck down here with Joyce fussing over me.
It doesn't matter, Kait told him quickly. You're supposed to be in a collapse, so stay collapsed. Don't do anything to make her suspicious.
To distract herself, she looked out the window,
squinting against the mild light. And then she saw something that made her heart jump into her throat.
Instantly there was an answering wave of alarm from downstairs. What, what? Lewis said. What's wrong?
It's nothing, Kaitlyn said. Don't worry. I've just got to check something out. It was the first time she'd tried to deceive the others, but she wanted a moment to think alone. She pulled away from them mentally, knowing they'd respect that. It was like turning your back in a crowded room: the only kind of privacy any of them had now.
She hesitated by the window, looking out at the black limousine parked on the narrow dirt road-and the two figures beside it. One was tall, white-haired, wearing a greatcoat. The other lithe, dark-haired, wearing a red pullover.
Mr. Zetes and Gabriel. Talking in a place where no one could hear them.
Kaitlyn hurried downstairs and slipped out the back door.
Quietly, she told herself as she made her way down the hill behind the Institute. Quietly and carefully. She kept to the blurred shadows of the redwood trees, creeping up on her prey.
She got close enough that she could hear Gabriel and Mr. Zetes talking. She knelt behind a bush, looking at them cautiously through the prickly winter-green foliage.
It gave her a grim satisfaction to realize that Gabriel's wall-building could have some drawbacks. He'd barricaded himself from the rest of them so efficiently that he didn't sense her a few yards away.
Fortunately, Mr. Zetes's dogs didn't seem to be around to spot her, either.
Shamelessly eavesdropping, Kaitlyn strained her ears.
One dread pounded inside her, sharper than her headache. She had a terrible fear that they were talking about the web.
In a way, she wouldn't be surprised. The strain on Gabriel had been growing every day. He was desperate, and desperate people look for desperate cures.
But if he'd betrayed them, if he'd gone to Mr. Zetes behind their backs ...
As she listened, though, her heartbeat calmed a little. It didn't seem to be that kind of conversation. Mr.
Zetes seemed to be stroking Gabriel's ego, complimenting Gabriel in a vague and extravagant way. Like somebody buttering up a fraternity pledge, Kaitlyn thought. It reminded her of the speech Mr. Zetes had given the first day at the Institute.
"I know how you must feel," he was saying. "Repressed, hemmed in by society-forced into this ordinariness. This mediocrity." Mr. Zetes gestured around him, and Kaitlyn instinctively scrunched lower behind her bush. "While all the time your spirit feels caged."
That's nasty, Kaitlyn thought. Talking about cages to someone just out of a boys' prison . . . that's low.
"Alienated. Alone," Mr. Zetes continued, and Kait allowed herself a grin. She knew for a fact that one thing Gabriel was not feeling these days was alone.
Mr. Zetes seemed to sense that he was off the mark, too, because he went back to harping on the repressed and caged bit. He was manipulating Gabriel; that was clear enough. But why? Kaitlyn thought.
She could barely feel Rob, Lewis, and Anna from here, and she didn't dare try to get in touch with them.
It would certainly alert Gabriel, and she wanted to find out what was going on.
"Society itself will someday realize the injustice that's been done to you. It will realize that extraordinary people must be allowed a certain liberty, a certain freedom. They must follow their own paths, without being caged by laws made for ordinary individuals."
Kaitlyn didn't like the expression on Gabriel's face, or the dim feelings she could sense from him behind his walls. He looked . . . smug, self-important. As if he were taking all this crap seriously.
It's the strain, Kaitlyn thought. He's so sick of us that he's gone right round the bend.
"I think we should continue this discussion at my house," Mr. Zetes was saying now. "Why don't you come up with me this evening? There's so much we have to talk about."
Horrified, Kaitlyn saw that Gabriel was shrugging. Accepting. "I've been wanting to get away," he said.
"In fact, I'd do just about anything to get out of here."
"We might as well go from here," Mr. Zetes said. "I was going to pay a visit to the Institute, but I'm sure Joyce can carry on without me."
Alarm flashed down Kaitlyn's nerves and her heart thumped. Gabriel was getting in the car. They were going to leave right now-and there was no time to do anything.
Only one thing. She stood up, trying to look bold and casual at once, and to think clearly despite the pain in her head.
"Take me, too," she said.
Two heads snapped around to look at her. Gabriel had paused with one foot inside the limousine. Both he and Mr. Zetes looked very startled, but in an instant Mr. Zetes's expression had changed to fierce, pitiless scrutiny.
"I've been listening," Kaitlyn said, since this was obvious. "I just came down to-to think, and I saw you, and I listened."
Gabriel's eyes were dark with fury-he was taking it as another invasion of his privacy. "You little-"
"Different rules for extraordinary people," Kaitlyn told him imperiously, standing her ground. "Society shouldn't cage me in." It was the best she could do trying to remember the gibberish Mr. Z had been spouting.
And it seemed to soften Mr. Z's fierce expression. His grim old lips curved a little. "So you agree with that," he said.
"I agree with freedom," Kaitlyn said. "There're times when I feel just like a bird hitting a pane of glass-and then flying back a little and hitting it again-because I just want to get out."
It was the truth, in a way. She had felt like that- back in Ohio. And the ring of truth seemed to convince Mr. Zetes.
"I often thought you might be the second one to come around," he murmured, as if to himself. Then he looked back at her.
"I should very much like to talk to you, my dear," he said, and there was a tone of formality, of finality, in his voice. As if the simple words were part of some ceremony. "And I'm sure Gabriel will be delighted to have you along."
He made a courteous gesture toward the limo.
Gabriel was gazing at Kaitlyn darkly, looking unconvinced and not at all delighted to have her. But"" she slowly got into the car, he shrugged coldly. "Oh, sure."
"Shouldn't we go to the Institute first?" Kaitlyn asked, as Mr. Zetes got in and the limousine began to move, backing up smoothly toward the bridge. "I could change my clothes. . . ."
"Oh, you'll find things quite informal at my home," Mr. Zetes said, and smiled.
They were getting farther away from the purple house every second. Rob, Kaitlyn thought, and then with more force. Rob! Rob!
She got only a distant sense of mental activity as an answer. Like hearing a muffled voice, but being totally unable to make out the words.
Gabriel, help me, she thought, deliberately turning her face away, looking out the limousine window. It frightened her to be using telepathy with Mr. Zetes in the car, but she didn't have a choice. She sent the thought directly at Gabriel, jarring through his walls. We need to tell Rob and the others where we're going.
Gabriel's response was maddeningly indifferent. Why?
Because we're going off with a nut who could have anything in mind for us, that's why! Don't you remember Marisol? Now, just help me! I can't get through to them!
Again Gabriel seemed completely unaffected by her urgency. If he were going to put us in a coma like Marisol, he would hardly need to take us to San Francisco, he said contemptuously. And besides, it's too late now. We're too far away.
He was right. Kaitlyn glared out the window, trying not to let her tension show in her body.
Nobody asked you to come and invite yourself along, Gabriel told her, and she could feel the genuine coldness behind his words. The resentment and anger. If you don't like it, that's your own fault.
He hates me, Kaitlyn thought bleakly, putting up walls of her own. She wasn't as good at it as he was, but she tried. Right now, she didn't want to share anything with him.
It was getting dark, the swift chilly darkness of a winter evening. And every mile the limousine went north was taking her farther and farther away from Rob and the Institute, and closer to she didn't know what.
By the time they reached San Francisco, it was fully dark, and the city lights twinkled and gleamed in skyscraper shapes. The city seemed vaguely menacing to Kaitlyn-maybe because it was so beautiful, so charming and cheerful-looking. As if it were decked out for a holiday. She felt there had to be something beneath that lovely, smiling facade.
They didn't stay in the city. The limo headed toward dark hills decorated with strings of white jewels.
Kaitlyn was surprised at how quickly the tall buildings were left behind, at how soon they were passing streets of quiet houses. And then the houses began to be farther and farther apart. They were driving through trees, with only an occasional light to show a human habitation.
The limousine turned up a private driveway.
"Nice little shack," Gabriel said as they pulled up in front of a mansion. Kaitlyn didn't like his voice at all. It was mocking, but dry and conspiratorial, as if Mr.
Zetes would appreciate the joke. As if Gabriel and Mr. Zetes shared something.
Something I don't share, Kaitlyn thought. But she tried to put the same tone in her own voice. "Really nice."
Under heavy eyelids, Gabriel gave her a glance of derisive scorn.
"That's all for tonight," Mr. Zetes told the chauffeur as they got out. "You can go home."
It gave Kaitlyn a tearing sensation to watch the limousine cruise away. Not that she'd ever said more than
"hello" to the driver, but he was her last connection with . . . well, normal human beings. She was alone now, with Mr. Zetes and a Gabriel who seemed to resent her very existence.
"I live very simply, you see," Mr. Zetes was saying, walking up the columned path to the front door. "No servants, not even the chauffeur. But I manage."
Prince and Baron, the two rottweilers, came bounding up as he opened the door. They calmed at a glance from Mr. Zetes, but followed closely behind him as he and his visitors walked through the house.
Just another thing to make Kaitlyn nervous and unhappy.
Mr. Zetes took off his coat and hung it on a stand. Underneath he was wearing an immaculate, rather old-fashioned suit. With real gold cuff links, Kait thought.
The inside of the house was as impressive as the outside. Marble and glass. Thick, velvety carpets and polished, gleaming wood. Cathedral ceilings. All sorts of foreign and obviously expensive carvings and vases. Kaitlyn supposed they were art, but she found some of them repulsive.
Gabriel was looking around him with a certain expression-one it took her a moment to categorize. It was... it was the way he'd been looking at the magazine with the expensive cars. Not greedy; greed was too loose and unformed. This expression had purpose; it was sharp and focused.
Acquisitive, Kaitlyn thought. That was it. As if he's planning to acquire all this. As if he's determined to.
Mr. Zetes was smiling.
I should look like that, too, Kaitlyn thought, and she tried to stamp an expression of narrow-eyed longing on her own face. All she wanted was to fool Mr. Zetes until he let them go home. At the beginning she'd had some idea about finding things out about Mr. Zetes-but not anymore. Now she was just hoping to live through whatever was coming and get back to the Institute.