She did. Sarah was there with her, somehow; she didn’t know quite how or why she knew, but it was true.
“What about Shelley?”
“She’s got loads of money, all that money from her family steel business, billions, she’s bankrolled Helix, the entire operation. And she found you. You’re a special case, you know. People like you are almost impossible to find. We searched for years.”
“People like me?”
“You’re a carrier, Jess. We’ve done a lot of research on this. Autism can be a symptom, you see, it can be traced through generations, through families. Your brother, he was a carrier, and probably your mother too.”
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
Gee smiled. “See, I told you I wouldn’t be very good at this. What I mean is, you’ve got the psi gene. It’s just been dormant. Oh, it’s nothing like Sarah’s, I don’t mean that. You’re not at that level. But you’ve been in a deep sleep, and we’re waking you up. Dr. Shelley’s been dosing you with the dimerizer we developed. Slipping them into your drinks, your food. We’ve gotten the little factory dusted off and chugging away. Can’t you feel it, Jess? I know you can.”
For a moment he seemed to loom over her in his excitement, and she clenched her eyes shut tight, and then blinked three times. His face with its horrible goatee was still there, but it had retreated a bit, and his grin looked a little less like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, but she did, even at this very moment she believed every word. That coffee in the Cave, the oily rings floating across the surface… my God What have they done to me?
“I’m sorry I had to pull the wool over your eyes. I really am. But you were supposed to be brought in gently. Look, I’m just a cog in the wheel here. If it had been up to me, I might have done things differently, but it doesn’t matter what I think.”
A terrible thought occurred to her. “Not Patrick too? Or Charlie?”
He shook his head. “Patrick’s oblivious of anything more than two inches beyond his own nose. So wrapped up in that silly group. Shelley knew about your friendship with Charlie, she knew about Charlie’s connection with Patrick. It was all set up to happen the way it did. Patrick and I talked about women once or twice, I suggested he make a couple of recent phone calls to put himself back into Charlie’s thoughts, you know, old flame and all, and she steered you our way. Neither one of them knew the full truth.”
“Why, Gee?” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”
“Because we needed you,” another voice said. “I need you.”
Dr. Jean Shelley stepped forward into the light. She walked with difficulty, seeming to favor her right leg. All the elegance and gentle grace was gone, and left in its place was this pale, haggard shell.
“I don’t have much time,” she said. “I have to do whatever I can now, or it will be too late for me. But everything I’ve told you is true. We needed someone fresh, someone special. Someone who could connect to her like her mother could have, if she were well. We checked into your medical background, school records, intelligence tests. You had some blood taken during a physical, we got our hands on that too. It became clear, with your family history and the test results, that you are a psi carrier. We needed you to make a bond with Sarah, so that when the time came…” She shrugged. “You could help us. Help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Convince her to do the right thing. Do you understand? She needs a friend, a mentor to guide her. This ability she has, it’s too big for one little girl to hold. We’ve pushed and tweaked and encouraged it to the point of ignition. The brain is a muscle like any other, and she’s been building it up without any sort of regulator. But the company’s gotten what they need from her, the scientists have done their thing, and now it’s my turn. And you’re my safety valve.”
“You want her to perform some sort of miracle?”
“I want her to fix her mistake!” Shelley shouted. A vein throbbed in her temple. She shook her head, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, let it out in a hiss. “I’m sorry, I lost control. That was wrong of me. But this is… emotional. I have days left, if that. She can do it. She’s done enough to hold it off before, and now that she’s stronger I think she can erase it completely. There are plenty of examples of psychic healing, from Jesus Christ himself right on down the line. Why not Sarah? I want her to kill each and every diseased cell, hunt them down and destroy them. She can do that much for me.”
“And if that’s not possible?”
Shelley didn’t answer, just looked at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. Jess knew then, if she hadn’t before: Dr. Jean Shelley had lost her mind.
She chose her next words carefully. “What about Wasserman?”
“Evan was a cog in the wheel,” Shelley said. “He helped us do the work, consulted with me on medical opinions, but he never even knew I was behind Helix, behind the grant money that kept the facility afloat. When this whole place comes crashing down, he’ll take the fall in public for it. I know you think I’m cruel. He had feelings for me, yes, and I manipulated that. But you can’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what you’d do, until you’re in my shoes.”
“He’s dead,” Jess said. “I saw Sarah kill him.”
“And I will be too, if we can’t get her to help.” Shelley nodded at someone. Two men stepped forward, into her line of sight. Heavy and large through the shoulders. The muscle. What are they going to do, threaten to break my legs? But they only unhooked the straps from her wrists and ankles and then helped her to a sitting position. Gee watched with arms folded across his chest.
She looked around. They were in a huge, empty room. The walls and ceiling were covered with some sort of black material, and there were no windows. The only light came from the open door at their backs. With such little light the room seemed to expand, to stretch into infinity.
“You want to know where you are,” Gee said. “Sensory deprivation tanks can expand the mind exponentially. Studies have shown that psi is enhanced when external stimuli are limited. We tested her in here. You think that random number generator trick was cool? You should have seen some of the things she showed us. But we’ve been able to keep pretty tight controls on her, limiting her with drugs. As she’s grown, her abilities have expanded. It would be amazing to see what she’s capable of now.”
“If you’ll think things through, you’ll see that this is the only way,” Shelley said. “By helping us you’re helping Sarah. You’re keeping her alive too. Because if she doesn’t learn how to control this gift that she has, she won’t survive it. Reach out to her and bring her back. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted to do all along?”
“We all win,” Gee said. “Just like I told you.” He stepped closer to her. “I want to see Sarah do well, just like you. I think she’s one of the most incredible miracles ever to walk this earth. We can all learn from her.”
Damn it. Think. Her mind felt sluggish from the drugs they had given her. Her hands and feet tingled and she shook them lightly, as if freeing them from sleep. She looked around the little group. They were all watching her, waiting for her to make a move.
“I guess I don’t have a choice.”
Shelley smiled. A range of emotions washed across her features, softening them in the gentle light from the open door. “Good girl. I knew you’d understand. I always knew it, from the first moment I saw you.” She stepped up to the gurney and put her hand on Jess’s shoulder, then leaned in more closely as if revealing a secret. Her face burned with a feverish intensity. Jess resisted the urge to shrug away her touch. “I know I’ve handled this badly, in many ways. I know you feel betrayed. But try to see things from the right perspective. I’ve spent the last few years trying to help Sarah, keep her from harming herself. Evan took things a bit too far at the end, but he’s gone now. There are a lot of people who want a piece of her, but I can make them go away. I can keep her hidden.”