"Hey, Freeman, is that you?" Isaac said in a loud whisper.
Freeman was about to answer, then wondered if Isaac had been turned into a mole for the Trust. Stranger things had happened. You couldn't trust a guy just because he was a kid instead of an adult.
"I saw it happen," Dipes said, sniffling from a cold. "I mean, I saw what's going to happen. And it's not nice."
Freeman peeked around the corner. Isaac and Dipes stood there in sweatpants and T-shirts. Isaac's curly hair was damp, and they were both panting from exertion. Isaac nudged Dipes and said "He saw you guys hiding in the corner by the stairs."
"So you can read minds, too?" Starlene asked Dipes.
"Sort of," Isaac answered for him. "He saw it ten minutes ago. It took us that long to sneak away from the gym and get here."
"Is that where the other kids are?"
"Yeah. Except Vicky. Some goon came and got her. A new guy, wearing a uniform. And Deke's still nowhere to be found."
"What else did you see?" Freeman asked Dipes, then added for Starlene's benefit, "He's clairvoyant, or whatever you call it when you know the future. Like Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce, except Dipes doesn't talk in stupid riddles."
Starlene nodded as if such a talent were only natural in a world where kids had ESP and ghosts walked around like they owned the place. At least she seemed to be losing some of that grown-up tendency to deny everything that didn't fit into her narrow worldview Freeman decided maybe there was hope for her after all.
"Can we trust her?" Dipes said. Isaac put a hand of encouragement on his shoulder.
"She's promised not to shrink us," Freeman said. "She just wants to help."
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Starlene said. "So, what's going to happen that we need to be scared of?"
Dipes looked at Freeman. "Ghosts."
Isaac said "You guys keep going on about ghosts. I'll believe it when I see it."
"Believe it," Starlene said. "What ghosts in particular are you talking about, Edmund?"
"Edmund?" Isaac said, looking at Dipes. "That's a pretty cool name. Like in a British book or something. Why didn't you tell us?"
He shrugged. "I like 'Dipes' better, 'cause Edmund's what my folks called me."
"What ghost did you see?" Starlene repeated.
Dipes pointed a finger at Freeman's chest. "Yours."
"Great," Freeman said. "Well, maybe you saw only one kind of future, and there's bound to be a gazillion different futures."
Isaac's dark complexion grew a shade paler. "Sure. Like opening doors on a video game. Depending on which room you go in, different stuff happens."
"We better go in one of them, and soon," Starlene said. She went to the stairwell door and began trying keys. "They'll be after us."
"Are you scared?" Dipes asked Freeman.
"About maybe dying? Nah. There are way worse things than that."
"Like what?"
Freeman didn't want to dwell on it. For one thing, if he died, that meant he'd have to see Mom again. For another, he didn't plan on dying. Even Clint Eastwood managed to make it to the final credits nine times out of ten.
Except in those movies where Clint was the Defender of me Weak, Protector of the Innocent. Then it was practically a hero's requirement to take one for the team. He looked at Starlene's face. Tears made twin lines down her cheeks.
Damn, Freeman thought. She must really sort of like me a little bit.
"It's worse to live like you're waiting for second chances," Freeman finally said. "That's worse than being dead."
Starlene found the right key and swung the door open. She wiped her nose and regained her composure.
"You guys better stay here," Freeman said.
"No way," Isaac said. "They're going to pick us off one by one if we don't do something."
"Yeah," Dipes said. "I saw a future where this place was empty. All the kids gone. Except for the ones in the basement."
"The basement?"
"Yeah. Where the ghosts live."
Freeman followed Starlene down the dark stairs.
Isaac took Dipes's hand and came after them. "So we better stick together. Plus, this may be my only chance to see a real live ghost."
"Just hope you're not looking in a mirror at the time," Freeman said.
They felt their way down. A dim emergency light filtered up from the base of the stairs, the glow painting the cobwebs a sickly yellow. The air was thick with dust and the rot of old masonry. The walls of the stairwell were stone, and a damp chill settled into Freeman's bones as they descended. They gathered at the basement door and Starlene began trying keys.
"What's the plan?" Freeman whispered.
"Get Vicky and get out," she answered.
"Out, where?"
"We'll make up that part when we get to it."
"Good plan," Freeman said.
"Can you read Vicky's mind? Or, what do you call it, 'triptrap' her?"
"I've had other tilings on my mind. Like being a ghost."
"Try again," Isaac said.
Freeman shut out the sound of the water dripping behind the walls, forgot the fear of death that tickled his skin like knife tips, ignored his heart pounding as if trying to hammer its way through his rib cage, blocked whatever thoughts were racing through the minds of Starlene and Dipes and Isaac.
He sent his mind out, in that process that was still freaky even though he'd done it hundreds of times. Triptrapping, walking across that mental bridge. He concentrated picturing Vicky's face, the lips that said such kind words, the pretty eyes that looked all the way through him…
He had to back up because he was getting distracted. He couldn't afford to think of that other stuff, that mushy, kissy lovey-dovey crap. Clint Eastwood didn't have time for it, except in his worst movies, and neither did Freeman.
He triptrapped again, concentrating harder this time. He was rapid cycling like crazy, going from manic to depressed, up to down, white-hot to blue, throbbing like a police car's lights. Something weird was going on, the erratic electromagnetic pulses were scrambling his synapses. He was swinging from mania to depression so fast that the two almost merged into a bizarre new emotional state.
You've been here before. Maybe it's just your imagination, though, but that's the kind of obsessive thought you have while depressed, or maybe you 're up and you think this is some kind of holy gift.
Maybe you 're supposed to use this power to be a Protector of the Innocent. Don't be a damned fool. Nobody's innocent, and nobody's worth protecting. Or is that just depression talking?
You 're innocent. You didn't kill her.
If you try hard enough, you can make the world stop. You can make your brain go away. You 're bigger than God.
Forget about all that and CONCENTRATE. This is about saving Vicky, not you. For once in your sorry life, it's NOT ABOUT YOU.
And then he broke through, bridged with her as she was trying to reach him, and for the most beautiful, terrible moment they were linked, their sentences cramming together and overflowing like two glasses of water poured into a third, thoughts circling and dancing and taking on meanings beyond words.
Then Freeman saw what Vicky was seeing, and wished that the gift had stayed in the hands of God or Satan or Dad or whatever else cruel bastard had given it to him. Because Vicky was in the deadscape, big time.
FORTY-TWO
"You have to get right to the source," Kenneth Mills said. His voice rose as the power to the superconductors increased. Kracowski looked at the rows of specially built fuse boxes that were stacked on the wall behind the tanks. He didn't know what would happen if the whole operation shorted out, but that might be preferable to observing the results of Mills's mind games.