Linda still hesitated, but as the nurse turned back to Mark, kneeling next to him now and reaching tentatively toward his face, she decided she'd better do as Miss Sherman had told her. As she started out of the office, she heard the nurse speaking to Mark, her voice low, her words carefully enunciated.
"Now, Mark, I'm going to look at your eyes. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm your friend. Do you understand?"
Frowning, Linda turned around in time to see Mark, his eyes once again glowing oddly, staring at the nurse, finally nodding his head so slightly Linda almost missed it. Carefully, almost warily, Linda thought, the nurse reached out and tried to tip Mark's head toward the light.
Once again Mark's hand flashed up, striking the nurse painfully on the wrist.
Linda was about to go back into the inner office when a voice stopped her. "It's all right. I'll take care of this."
Linda, surprised, spun around to see Phil Collins, his breath coming quickly, as if he'd been running, standing just inside the door of the waiting room. Without waiting for her reply, he hustled her out into the hall, firmly closing the door behind her. As Linda started slowly back to her classroom, she heard the inside door close as well.
In Verna Sherman's office Phil Collins took one look at Mark Tanner and picked up the phone. A minute later he was talking to Marty Ames. "It's Tanner," he said. "Christ, Marty, it looks like JeffLaConner all over again! What the hell's going on?"
Ames cursed silently. He knew he'd been taking a risk with Mark, but after his conversation with Jerry Harris last week, he'd decided it was worth it. And yesterday, after another call from Harris, he'd doubled Mark's dosage of the growth hormone again, added a steroid compound, and strengthened the subliminal suggestion as well. If the boy turned on his own mother, who could blame anyone but Mark himself? And from what he'd heard already this morning, it apparently had almost worked.
But now…
"All right," he said aloud. "Just calm down, Phil. We'd better bring him out here. Just keep talking to him and try to keep him calm. Ifheis going-" He broke off his words, then began again. "If he's having a breakdown, there's a lot of pressure building up inside him, both physical and mental. Thevan'll be on its way within a couple of minutes."
Collins hung up the phone, then looked once more at Mark. He seemed to have shrunk back in his chair, but his eyes were flicking watchfully between the coach and the nurse, and when Collins moved toward him, his whole body tensed and his hands knotted into tight fists.
"Easy," Collins said. "Take it easy, Mark. We're going to help you. We're going to take you to the doctor, find out what's wrong, and fix it. Okay?"
Mark said nothing, but his head dropped down, hunching low between his shoulders. He flinched as yet another stab of pain shot through his skull. It felt as though his head were going to explode. As the pain spread out through his body, the red haze that fogged his vision deepened, and he squinted his eyes nearly closed in an effort to see.
Then a flicker of movement caught his attention and he instinctively struck out at it. There was a muted cry, then a thump as something hit the wall and fell to the floor.
"Jesus!" Collins swore softly. "You okay?"
Verna Sherman nodded and struggled to her feet, rubbing the bruise on her shoulder where Mark's fist had struck her. "What's wrong with him?" she asked. "Some of the other boys got sick, but I've never seen anything like this."
She started to move toward Mark once again, then thought better of it and retreated to the chair behind her desk. "Is Dr. Ames coming?"
Collins nodded. "There should be a van here any minute," he told her.
His words seemed to strike a nerve in Mark. He leaped out of the chair and started toward the door. Instantly, Collins threw his own heavy frame toward Mark and his arms snaked around the boy's waist as they both fell to the floor. For a second Collins thought it was going to be all right-Mark was pinned beneath him, and he outweighed the boy by at least fifty pounds. But as Mark lunged upward and to the side, Collins felt himself lose his balance, then Mark wriggled loose from his grip entirely and made another try for the door. Collins reached out, grasped one of Mark's ankles and jerked hard.
Mark dropped heavily, grunting as his left knee struck the floor, then spun around to glower at the coach, his grunt of pain giving way to ananimallike snarl as he confronted his attacker. The sheer fury in his eyes made Collins instinctively draw back, and Mark coiled himself to strike out once more.
Suddenly the door opened and three men from Rocky Mountain High pushed their way into the small office. As two of them grabbed Mark, the third one began forcing a straitjacket over Mark's head.
Bellowing with anger, Mark tried to duck away from the heavy canvas garment, but the two attendants holding him were too strong. The armless tube dropped over his torso, pinning his arms to his sides, and one of the men instantly pulled a heavy strap between his legs and buckled it in place while another one adjusted the neck so it couldn't slip down over Mark's shoulders.
"That's it," an attendant said when the straitjacket was firmly secured. "Let's get him out of here." Half carrying Mark, half dragging him, they escorted him out of the office and into the corridor. They were almost to the main door when the bell signaling the end of the hour clanged loudly and the corridor, empty only a moment before, instantly filled with milling teenagers.
As soon as they saw Mark, swaddled in heavy canvas and supported by two men, they stopped, staring curiously. Just as the attendants were hustling Mark through the front doors, Linda Harris pushed her way through the crowd.
"Mark? Mark!"
Mark had been struggling wildly against his bonds, a series of unintelligible grunts and snarls boiling up from his lungs. But as Linda Harris called his name, he froze for a second, then turned toward her.
His eyes, burning with fury only a second earlier, cleared, and he focused on Linda. For a moment he was silent, then his mouth opened.
"Help me," he pleaded, his voice barely a whisper as his eyes now flooded with tears. "Please help me…"
As Linda stared after him in shocked silence, the attendants led Mark to the van, put him inside, and drove away.
Twenty minutes later, driving Elaine Harris's car, Sharon pulled up in front of the school, shut off the engine, hurried up the front steps and into the main hall. She glanced in both directions, then spotted the sign on the door of Malcolm Fraser's office. Her heels clicking loudly on the marble floor, she strode toward the principal's door, then stopped to compose herself before stepping inside. Finally, praying that the fear that still held her in its grip didn't show too clearly on her face, she went in.
Shirley Adams, only back at her desk for a few minutes after helping the rest of the staff herd the students back into their classrooms, looked up from her desk, her expression annoyed. "I'm sorry," she began, "but I don't know-"
Her voice faltered as she realized the person who had just come in wasn't one of the kids. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I thought you were-" She faltered again, then managed a recovery. "May I help you?"
Sharon's breath caught as all her internal alarms sounded a warning. Something was wrong-she knew it as certainly as she knew her own name. She forced herself to produce a friendly smile. "I'm Sharon Tanner," she said. "Mark's mother." She heard the secretary gasp audibly and saw her eyes flick instantly toward the inner office. Every nerve in Sharon's body tingled.
The secretary pressed a button on an intercom. "Mr. Fraser? I think you might want to come out. Mrs. Tanner is here."
Therewassomething wrong. Why would the woman have summoned the principal before she had even stated her business? The inner door opened and a balding man of fifty or so years came out, rubbing his hands nervously before offering one of them to Sharon. "Mrs. Tanner," he began, and Sharon was certain his voice was a shade too hearty. "I was just going to call you."