Chapter 61

The latest scans picked up a significant increase in Subject V-1’s neural activity. Too much to be explained by a sudden natural regeneration. It’s possible she’s been avoiding her meds or feigning her apparent state.

I’ve put her in a locked single room for the time being, but it’s imperative we do a full medical. If she is functional and off her meds, it’s possible she has full access to the PsyNet.

I won’t, of course, act without your authoriz—

—Dr. Upashna Leslie to Councilor Marshall Hyde (unsent)

DESPITE HER IMMEDIATE action, Theo couldn’t move fast enough to catch Yakov as he collapsed without warning, the side of his face hitting the earth as the scanner fell to one side in a spasm of cracked green. Dropping to her knees, she placed a desperate hand on his back . . . and felt it. The residual heat of a blast from a weapon designed to deliver a jolt of energy that scrambled the nervous system.

Most targets twitched erratically as their bodies refused to obey their commands, but remained conscious.

Yakov hadn’t twitched, was dead silent and motionless.

Breath short and shallow and chest feeling as if it had been crushed inward, Theo couldn’t think rationally, had no room in her brain to consider who’d shot him in this lonely place filled only with the dead. She just needed to know if he was alive! She went to press her fingers to his neck, to where she should feel a strong, steady pulse.

“He’s not dead,” said a husky female voice. “Sorry about the hard fall, but I had no choice. He was about to scent me even though I stayed upwind.”

Spinning around, Theo went for the stunner in her boot, but Yakov’s assailant already had a weapon trained on her. “Hand it over or I take another shot. Even a bear can’t survive two hits at max output.”

Theo’s pulse wanted to skitter, her mouth to go dry, but panic would get her nowhere. So she pulled on the skin of the fearless girl who’d survived a psychopathic Councilor—and became a being of ice-cold resolve. “Can I check his pulse first?”

Blank eyes, the woman’s smile a painted-on facsimile that made the hairs on Theo’s nape prickle. “Sure, why not.”

Theo pressed her fingers to Yakov’s neck, holding her breath until she felt it—the uninterrupted beat of his heart. He was a bear, she reminded herself. Heavily muscled despite his compact frame, and difficult to kill.

“Now,” the woman said, “the weapon.”

Ensuring she kept her hands in view at all times so as not to trigger the threat, Theo removed the weapon from her boot and threw it across to land at the other woman’s own booted feet. She wore slimline black jeans and a black sweater with those lace-up boots, but it wasn’t her stark choice of clothing that interested Theo.

Blue eyes.

Fine flyaway blond hair that fell below her shoulders.

A heart-shaped face.

Cheekbones that were just a fraction too rounded to be striking.

The woman’s eerie smile deepened as she kicked Theo’s weapon into the bushes. “It’s uncanny, isn’t it? The resemblance. I have to admit I gasped the first time I saw you in your adult form.”

“We’re mirror images of each other.”

A crinkling of the woman’s eyes that might even have been real. “You’re being sweetly polite. I’m at least a decade your senior in looks. In reality, it’s fourteen years.”

Theo’s mind made the connection in a fury of neural fire. “Keja.” Marshall Hyde’s daughter, the one marked as dead on the family tree.

“Oh, that was faster than I expected. Well done.” She nudged the weapon up. “On your feet. Oh, and turn off, then throw away your phone, too. His as well. All that pesky tracking. I already took care of the system in your vehicle.”

Theo did as ordered, using the opportunity offered by getting Yakov’s phone out of his back pocket to once more feel the warmth of him. Alive, he’s alive, she told herself as she threw both phones into the trees before getting to her feet.

She couldn’t be emotional, couldn’t show how much it hurt her to just leave him. Because Yakov had a higher chance of survival if she did abandon him—he was tough enough to survive the weather even if the clouds burst, and Keja couldn’t shoot him again if he wasn’t in her line of sight.

That was when Keja lowered the weapon to her side, black against black, and said, “Nene?”

Theo’s heart kicked with bruising force as Janine walked out of the trees. Halting partway, she looked from Theo to Keja, back again. “Keke?” A child’s thin plea.

Despite the fact that her aunt had lowered her weapon, Theo didn’t make the mistake of launching an attack. Keja’s fingers gripped the sleek black device tight—tight enough that Theo’s minor Tk wouldn’t be able to dislodge it from her grasp.

Keja could lift it and shoot Theo faster than Theo could get to her.

Then there was Janine.

She shouldn’t be here, Theo said in a furious telepathic burst aimed at her aunt.

Keja’s gaze flickered only a fraction. No, but we all have to make sacrifices. To the other woman, she said, “Can you take the bear to our old house? He’s hurt.” Gentle, coaxing voice. “Theo and I will follow.”

“Yes, Keke. I like to teleport.” Walking over to Yakov, she put a hand on his shoulder . . . and was gone, Yakov with her.

Theo’s heart punched against her rib cage. “Who did you bury here, Keja?” she asked, knowing she had it right, that her aunt was behind the echoing emptiness of the facility.

“Staff.” A one-shouldered shrug. “Don’t tell me you feel sorry for them. I won’t believe you. Bastards tried to turn you into a puppet same as they did me. Only I got the first version of the treatment, with all the hard edges and jagged shards.”

Theo glanced over at the depressions in the ground. “All the staff?”

A curt nod. “Couple of different sites around the grounds. Janine helped me dig the holes. I told her it was for planting trees.”

That explained why the holes had been deep: telekinetic assistance from a Gradient 6.1.

But Keja wasn’t finished. “Considered keeping the lead doc alive, but bitch was too smart and stupidly loyal to our patriarch. And she tried to lock me up.” Eyes devoid of emotion. “Nene got me out, then I bashed the doc’s skull in.”

“Why did no one notice her mind vanishing from the Net?”

“Time of disruption, with Father blown up that same day. Everyone flapping around about a dead Councilor. No one was watching for a few isolated minds that ceased to exist one cold and rainy night.”

“I have to admit it,” Theo said, “your timing was sublime.”

A gleam in Keja’s eyes. “Another plus was that Father had made sure his staff had airtight PsyNet shields, there was no official payroll record on Marshall systems, and that their families had no idea of their work address.”

A deeper smile, but still nothing in those glacial blue eyes. “There was no trail to follow. They vanished without a trace. Just like I did, Theo. His own daughter. Erased from existence.”

Theo acted on instinct. “My mother—your sister, Claire—is at this moment plotting my murder.” Pax had decided, after consulting with Theo, to allow the conspiracy to continue on so he could pinpoint as many psychopathic bad apples as possible. “Our family sucks.”

Barking out a laugh that was too hard, too broken, Keja said, “Want to know a secret?” The rising wind lifted strands of her hair into the air. “Twins run in the Marshall line.”

It took Theo a second. “You’re a twin, too.” Even as she spoke the words, she knew they couldn’t be true. Her mother was far older than Keja. There were no other siblings.

“My brother died in the womb,” Keja said, as if reading her mind. “They didn’t even note him down on the family tree, but I carry him here.” A tap of her head. “He woke up after the procedure, made sure I was never alone.”

Theo stared at the woman who was Theo with a little more time on her . . . and who was perhaps calmly, beautifully, insane. “How do you know so much about the back end of the operation?” she asked, both because Keja had all the answers—and because knowledge was power.

“Father had a habit of talking to me. Had no one else to boast to about his successes, I suppose—and even though I was a failed attempt, I was still functional enough to experiment on, and to serve as a control against the treatments they trialed on version 2.0.” The blue turned to stone, as inhuman as the gaze of a rattlesnake. “Walk.”

Version 2.0.

“That’s me, isn’t it? Version 2.0?” Theo said as she fell into step ahead of her aunt, soon emerging onto a familiar overgrown pathway scattered with yellow petals. She wasn’t afraid of being shot in the back. If Keja had wanted to shoot Theo, she’d have done it right after she shot Yakov.

“Yes, you’re the version that worked.” Bitterness coated in a rage that glittered with ice. “You’re the one who had the right brain chemistry, the perfect neuroplasticity.”

Theo’s stomach lurched, the breakfast Yakov had fed her with such affection threatening to rise up and erupt from her mouth. “Keja?” she said when she could speak again, her voice a rasp. “I don’t know what they did to me. Will you tell me?”

A long pause behind her, so long that they’d reached the door to the small residence she’d explored with Yakov before Keja replied. “He never told you?”

Taking a calculated risk, Theo glanced over her shoulder at her aunt. “I didn’t even know this place existed until I arrived at the gates and had a panic attack that triggered a flashback.”

Eyebrows lowering, Keja said, “Get inside,” but her tone was more thoughtful now.

Theo walked into the living area to find Yakov lying on the floor in the same position he’d been in on the forest floor. Janine sat beside him, patting at his arm. “He’s a bear, Keke,” she said in that sweet tone. “He’s nice. Why won’t he wake up?”

“He hit his head, Nenochka.” Keja’s tone was of another woman altogether, warm with compassion. “Why don’t you teleport back before Cissi comes looking for you? You remember what I said?”

Janine lifted a finger to her lips. “Our secret.” She giggled, then waved at them both and was gone.

“Where does Cissi think she is?”

“In the toilet at an indoor plant fair. Janine experiences stomach issues from time to time—long-term effect of the drugs they put her on here. Sorry about this.”

Theo’s body jerked, her nervous system overloading under the abrupt hit. Pain seared the nerves damaged by her grandfather’s assault, blackness unfolding in front of her eyes.

She heard Keja swear before her aunt caught her dropping body and shoved her into a chair. “Shouldn’t have had that much of an impact,” she muttered, before leaving Theo.

Theo wanted to act, grab the knife in her jeans pocket, the grenades in the pocket of the jacket, but her body refused to accept her commands. Her eyes wouldn’t even open.

Keja had bound Yakov’s legs and arms by the time they did.

Made him helpless. Just like in his nightmare.