Chapter 62

“Something’s wrong with Yasha. And neither he nor Theo are answering their phones. I’m tracking—Govno! Phones are either off or dead.”

“Try the vehicle.”

“Tracking disabled. Fuck.”

—Pavel Stepyrev and Valentin Nikolaev (now)

THEO’S AUNT GRABBED a chair from the dining table and dragged it to a position opposite Theo.

Theo, her nerves yet twitching, tried to use her Tk to push the weapon out of her aunt’s hand, but though Keja’s arm moved, she kept her grip. “Stop that.” A light reprimand. “I’m you, remember? I know every trick you do. Father tested them on me first.”

Breath shallow from the lingering effects of the stun, Theo decided to gather her energy and bide her time—and keep Keja’s attention off Yakov. She didn’t know why her aunt had spared his life, but she didn’t want to remind Keja of the biggest threat in the room, bound or not.

“So,” Keja murmured after taking a seat, “the old man didn’t tell you.”

Theo shook her head. “I have blurred memories from eight and a half to around sixteen. Distant, you could say. As if they’re not quite mine.”

“Interesting. I always wondered about the side effects of a successful procedure.” Keja put one foot on the knee of her other leg, resting her weapon on her thigh, finger on the trigger.

“You said puppets. He was attempting mind control?” Such experiments had been run in shadowy corners of the PsyNet as long as Psy had existed.

“He always said that was a useless endeavor that demanded too many resources. He called his goal ‘Enforced Malleability.’ ” Keja’s smile turned cruel, her eyes filling with emotion for the first time. “Mind control dressed up in pretty clothes if you ask me. A sop to his ego. Marshall Hyde would never be so common as to try the same stupid thing as countless others over the centuries.”

Theo tried not to glance at Yakov, look for any hint of movement, of waking. She couldn’t risk giving him away if he did begin to come out of the stun.

“He and his pet scientist came up with the idea of rehabilitating chosen people in a subtle way. Janine and Santo are two examples of their first successes. Enough mind left for thought, but no ability to think on their own.”

Keja sighed. “Father realized too late that the latter wouldn’t work. His puppets were akin to infants, needing constant care. Hardly useful as any type of operative.”

Theo’s skin flushed hot, then cold, but she didn’t interrupt, not wanting Keja to stop talking. Both to give Yakov more time to wake, and because she had to know the truth, no matter how twisted and brutal it turned out to be.

“The revised aim,” Keja said with a tap of the weapon against her thigh, “was to make a marionette who could think for herself . . . but whose brain was plastic enough to mold to obey his commands. An intelligent slave—but crucially, one who thought she had free will, so would never rebel. Why should she? She wasn’t being forced to do anything, after all.”

The sick feeling in Theo’s stomach spread through her veins, into her bones, until she couldn’t contain the violence of it. “He did that to me. He took away Theo and put a doll in my place!”

One of the old books on the shelf beside them flew off to bang onto the opposite wall.

Keja flinched, but didn’t threaten Theo with the weapon. Instead, she tilted her head to one side, and for the first time, her gaze was . . . normal. No flatness. No cold rage. Just curiosity, simple and explicable.

“What did you think was occurring?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered. With me, it was a black haze for years. I didn’t even know why they’d kept me alive until after I murdered Dr. Leslie and dug through her files. Turns out I was considered a level one success despite my ‘diminished mental state.’ ” Keja hooked the fingers of her free hand by her face to create air quotes. “Much more functional than Janine or Santo—but with an unfortunate need for an extreme level of instruction.”

Theo didn’t allow herself to get stuck on the casual mention of murder. Especially of a woman who’d gone along with the mutilation of minors. Because Keja was right; Theo didn’t feel sorry for the staff. “I don’t have any clear memories of the first years, but later, I thought I’d made the choice to please Grandfather in order to gain his approval.” She met her aunt’s eyes and bared her soul. “I’m haunted by that, Aunt Keja, haunted by the idea of being a willing accomplice to evil.”

A sudden piercing tenderness on the other woman’s face. “Well, young Theo, I can put your mind to rest on that point. Per Dr. Leslie’s files you were a near-total success—you had both the malleability and the intelligence required of a subject. As a test after you’d healed, your grandfather told you multiple times that you wanted to use a hot poker to burn a small bit of your skin to see how it would feel.”

Theo looked down at her arm, seeing through the jacket and her sweater to the small scar below her inner elbow that had always been a mystery. When she glanced up, Keja was nodding.

“You did it one day,” her aunt said, “and when asked why, you said it was because you’d wanted to. No torture, no intensive mental control; Grandfather would just tell you things until you believed them. And you did. You thought every single act he manipulated you to do was your own idea.”

Memories crashed through Theo’s mind of all the doors she’d opened, all the accidents she’d caused, all the responsibility she’d accepted, all the guilt she’d carry to the end of her days. Because knowing that she’d never had a choice didn’t wash away the blood he’d put on her hands. “I’m happy he’s dead.”

Keja’s smile was deeper, more real. “I would’ve preferred to do it myself, but—” Another shrug. “Can’t say it worked out all bad. I’d come out of the last of the fog a year or so before his assassination—”

“Wait, is that another glitch in the procedure?” Theo asked. “The fact that it wears off? I started to disobey him around sixteen.”

“Yes. Not on subjects like Nene and Santo—there just isn’t enough left for a recovery.” Cold rage in those familiar eyes. “The good doctor downgraded you in her files after you began to act out—from Alpha Variant to Sub-optimal Variant B.” Rage or not, Keja’s tone was dry, as if she had humor in her, this woman who wasn’t supposed to exist. “I’m sure you are most devastated.”

“Why did you wait a year to act?”

“Security,” Keja said. “Place was locked down. I had to plan—and I was in no immediate danger at the time, since Father continued to keep me around like a pet dog. I also wanted it so that when I did exit, they’d never find me again. Then someone blew Father dearest to bits.”

Throwing back her head, she laughed. “You should’ve seen the panic among the staff, Theo! Headless gerbils scuttling and scrambling. Janine had already sprung me from the locked room by then—once I realized what was going on, I had to go hide in a broom closet to get my urge to laugh under control. After the first panic, though, the doctor decided that since they had the funding, they should continue their ‘work’ until they received further instructions from Father’s successor.”

Keja flicked a glance at Yakov, her attention back on Theo before Theo could move a muscle. “I decided on a change of plan. In the confusion, the doc forgot to inform the rest of the staff that I was supposed to be locked up, and they’d long ago stopped paying attention to me.

“I was furniture that could walk and do menial tasks. So I just drugged them all through the kitchen. They had me working in there, can you believe it? Idiots. I’d been hoarding medication for months, had a special spot in the grounds where I buried it.

“Janine, the others, they gave me their meds, too, because I always snuck them treats from the kitchen. The staff just fell asleep.” A faint smile. “Of course, not everyone drank their nutrients at the same time, but it wasn’t hard to eliminate the holdouts once I had a weapon. The perimeter guards always got their nutrients first, you see. Had to be in top shape to protect the facility.”

Keja, too, Theo realized, had never had anyone to whom to boast about her exploits. And Theo wasn’t only a captive audience, she was an enthralled one. “Then what? Wouldn’t there have been a second shift? A third?”

“Just two. Twelve-hour shifts,” Keja clarified. “After we dragged the first lot into a room and I used my new access to the injectables to make sure they’d never wake up, I dressed up in security gear to belay suspicion at the gate. I also got Janine and a few others who were a touch more functional to change into staff scrubs, so the new shift wouldn’t immediately wonder where everyone was.”

She winced. “It did end up a tad bloody, but I had all the weapons and I had Nene. Santo and Queenie locked the doors while the staff weren’t looking. Rats in a maze. Stupid, scared rats so conditioned by Father on the importance of strict confidentiality—conditioning he reinforced by making it known that the punishment for any disclosure was death—that they never even squeaked for help on the PsyNet.”

Theo could imagine the staff’s terror as the conscious ones were picked off one by one, but she still couldn’t make herself pity them. Unlike her and Keja, the staff members had made a choice to assist in the brutalization of countless others. “I can’t believe Grandfather sacrificed a teleporter to his ambitions.” Teleport-capable Tks weren’t exactly thick on the ground—and Janine was a 6.1!

“Wonder of wonders, bastard did actually admit that to be a mistake. Their initial protocol involved focusing on people with a specific brainwave pattern, and Janine was unlucky enough to display that.

“Father was so consumed by the project at the time that he green-lit her acquisition for the procedure. Poor Nene. She thought she was coming in for a mandatory health check. Instead, they killed the crisp and martial Janine she was when she walked through the door, and left our sweet Nene in her place.”

Sorrow in those blue eyes so like Theo’s. “I think, if it had been just me, Theo, I would’ve forgiven Father. Isn’t that pathetic?”

“No.” Theo’s throat was thick; she understood this woman as no other could. “He was a charismatic man and he was the fulcrum of our world.”

A blink and the softness was gone. A muscle ticked in Keja’s jaw, her lip pulling up in the first whisper of a snarl.

Theo saw it then, the other dark trait that tied them together. “You’re like me,” she said, forcing herself not to look at Yakov even as anxiety ate through her bones. Why was her laughing, wild bear still so quiet? How hard had Keja hit him? Had her aunt miscalculated and done damage that would lead to a slow but sure death?

Keja laughed that broken laugh that grated on Theo’s senses. “I was the original you,” she said, her eyes bleeding to black in front of Theo—the eerie thing was that the black didn’t spread outward from the pupils, but inward from the edges.

It gave the impression of a voracious virus swallowing her up.

“The perfect candidate had to be a lower gradient,” Keja told her, “a Psy whose mind wasn’t powerful enough to resist and thus cause unintended damage. Higher-Gradients like Santo and Janine resisted too much, and lobotomized themselves in the process.”

“Why the children of the family?” Ugly as it was to think, her grandfather had had access to any number of people unconnected to him.

Yet he’d taken two young girls who’d trusted him.

Her own rage awoke. Gritting her teeth, she fought it back; she couldn’t afford to be immobilized by her bracelet.

Keja’s hair slid over her shoulders as she put both feet on the ground and leaned forward. “Do you really not know, Theo?”

“No. It makes no sense. Grandfather wanted the world to see the Marshall family as a power. Why would he risk that by permitting staff members to know the line could birth such weak members that they were considered disposable? He couldn’t guarantee their silence beyond any shadow of a doubt; I don’t care how powerful he was.”

“Oh, sweet child,” Keja murmured, the indicators of rage replaced by a gentle warmth. “We were trained for this. We were brought up for this. Isolated and taught certain skills. Did you never wonder why he nudged you to learn how to hack? Why you speak multiple languages? Why your caretaker taught you exercises designed to keep you flexible and nimble?”

“No,” Theo said, even as Keja’s words smashed the memories of her past into incomprehensible pieces. “I made those choices. That was all before the procedure.”

“Adults can influence a child in countless ways. An abused and abandoned child? Give them a crumb of praise for a choice, and they’ll never deviate from that path.” Keja’s gaze held hers. “He raised us to be cattle to the slaughter. We were nothing but meat for him to cut into, hunks of flesh he owned.”