When Connie opened her eyes she released a long breath. Her eyes, empty and muddy-looking yesterday when she saw her, now had a vibrancy in them that Michelle had never seen before. Connie’s demeanor seemed to change, her face grimaced and then relaxed, as if some unseen force was doing battle within. Her eyes would go from cloudy and unemotional to being filled with stark fear and fiery passion. When she shook her head Michelle stepped back, nervous about what was happening.
Finally the struggle stopped. Connie opened her eyes again and Michelle saw the urgency in them. “Run, Michelle! Get away from here now!”
Michelle broke down, confused. “Mother, what’s happening to you?”
Connie stifled back a sob of her own. “Michelle, I love you, please just listen to me and go!”
“I have to get you out!” Michelle made an attempt to go back to where Connie was laying but stopped short of touching the tendrils attached to her mother’s skin.
“No—” Connie Dowling shuddered, eyes locked open then suddenly closing again. When she opened them again she was panting. Her face was slick with moisture. She looked back at Michelle. “I know you… remember… when you were a child… and I’m sorry… please… trust those memories…” Her eyes closed and she went into those mini-convulsions again.
Michelle backed into the corner near the door and sobbed.
The episode lasted a long time—almost a minute. When it was over Connie Dowling lay prone on the cot. Michelle watched the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, then her mother opened her eyes. “Michelle?”
Michelle said nothing, too afraid to move.
“Michelle?” Connie’s eyes traveled the room until they locked on her. They were the eyes of a warm, caring woman. “Michelle… listen to me.”
“I’m so scared,” Michelle whimpered. All the memories and emotions that had come blasting through were now gone, leaving traces of themselves to linger in her mind.
“Look at me,” Connie said quickly. “Listen to me. I’m… trapped, honey. I know that you know what’s going on, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Your father and I…” Another small tremor passed through Connie and was gone quickly. “Your father… and I… were forced to watch you grow up as Corporate Financial took over us… our bodies… our minds…” She appeared to struggle again and her voice choked. “We always loved you. I know you didn’t know that then, that we didn’t tell you because… we couldn’t… Corporate Financial wouldn’t let us… but I’m telling you now… we always loved you.”
Michelle stifled back another sob. Despite the fact that her mother’s voice sounded choked the emotion in it was genuine. This was her real mother speaking to her from somewhere deep inside the flesh and blood shell of her physical self, the part that had been taken over by Corporate Financial. Connie Dowling’s real self had emerged and was fighting for control. “Oh, mom!”
Connie’s eyes closed again as another series of small tremors overtook her, then her eyes opened again. “I’m trying to fight it,” she said. “God help me, I want to fight it.”
And at the sound of Connie Dowling’s voice Michelle broke through her temporary paralysis and approached the cot. She picked up the explosive device she’d left at the foot of the cot, feeling the weight of it in her hands as she stood up and looked down at her mother. Tears continued to stream down her face as she locked her eyes with mother’s. “Mom?”
Connie Dowling looked at Michelle, her face struggling as Corporate Financial tried to take over. The light was going on and off in Connie’s eyes. “I’m trying to fight it… trying to… please…” Connie’s voice was raspy. “Help me… get these tendrils off and help me up. We’ll leave together… get your father, get him out, we’ll be a family again.”
“Mother,” Michelle said, trying to stifle back the tears.
“We’ll be a family again and it’ll be just like old times,” Connie Dowling said. She was smiling. “Remember how it used to be? Remember how things were when we were a family? Surely you remember the good times, don’t you?”
“Oh, mother,” Michelle said, holding back the sorrow as she took a deep breath, now knowing what she had to do.
Connie smiled wider as Michelle started to cry. “You remember! I knew you’d remember! Come… take these tendrils off. Help me…”
“I love you, mother,” Michelle said and then she raised the explosive device high over her head and brought it crashing down onto her mother’s skull. There was a hearty crunch as the heavy end of the device smashed into her mother’s forehead.
Connie Dowling went into convulsions and this time the tremors were different. They were those of a person with a serious head injury. Michelle dropped the explosive device she’d used to crush her mother’s skull with and scrambled back, stifling back a cry, part of her horrified at what she’d just done. God, I hope I did the right thing, omigod please I didn’t want her to suffer any more than she has to—
Then Connie Dowling stopped thrashing about and was still.
Michelle cried, slumped down into the corner, not knowing what to do now, only knowing that she had put her mother out of her misery and freed her spirit.
HOLDING SUSAN VICKERS again was like going back in time.
Susan was crying against his chest as he held her. Alan was crying, too. He couldn’t believe that he had let himself be taken in by this, that he had actually believed a corporate entity had manifested into a spiritual one.
What had he been thinking?
“Oh Alan,” Susan sobbed, holding him tightly. “I’m so sorry for everything. I’m so sorry.”
Alan could only hold her, so overwhelmed with grief of what he had put himself through, for allowing his stressed-out imagination to get the better of him, to allow it to be fed by those whack-nuts from the Coalition and so happy to finally be here with her, to see that she’d changed for the better. She’d gone through this so they could have a happy life together. He saw that now.
He was so overwhelmed with the emotions of seeing Susan Vickers again that he didn’t even notice the feathery sensations of the tendrils snaking out of Susan’s skin to make contact with his flesh.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MICHELLE FOUGHT TO get control of her emotions. She held back her tears, wiped her eyes and cheeks with the back of her hand. Connie Dowling’s prone body lay on the cot, motionless. Michelle took a deep breath, fighting every emotion back down into a tiny place in her mind to be dealt with later. Right now she had a job to do and she had to finish it. She’d lost fifteen minutes in this immersion room. Any minute now Rachel would attempt to jam the signal in an attempt to wake her up. Instead, what she got was Rachel Drummond’s voice coming through the tiny speaker in her ear. “Michelle! Michelle! You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Michelle said. Her throat was raw. “I’m getting out of here.”
“My God, I heard everything!” Rachel said. For the first time, Rachel sounded scared. Michelle wiped the moisture of tears and sweat off on her pant suit and straightened herself up. “I tried jamming the signal but it had no effect. I couldn’t get past it!”
“You did? You tried getting through to me?”
“Yes. I tried several times. I kept hoping you would fight her, that—”