Unseen Page 9

  “No,” Marion said, from the doorway. She had glided up unheard in her chair and was watching us with eyes that I was fairly sure seemed amused, and perhaps a little envious. “You’re reminding the boss lady of what it is we’re supposed to be fighting for. I’m all in favor of kissing breaks. But now you’re keeping me waiting, so move your asses.”

  She zipped off, and with a shake of his head and a muttered imprecation in Spanish that I didn’t bother to try to understand, Luis followed.

  The interior door slid shut behind me as I stepped in, and I saw our friendly Weather Warden Ben standing off to the side, in a booth that was likely bulletproof as well as fireproof; he touched a series of controls, putting in motion security measures that I was fairly sure would come as a nasty surprise to any intruders. Which, I was also sure, applied to us, since we were not recognized as being part of the group as yet.

  “Don’t worry,” Marion called back over her shoulder as she disappeared through another doorway. “You’ll get DNA-keyed when we’re done talking. All the doors will open for you, unless I override it.”

  The fact that someone still held the final power of life and death did not reassure me, even if it was someone so theoretically benign as Marion. “Explain the security, please.”

  “No,” she said, very calmly but just as firmly. “I don’t discuss the security arrangements with anyone but those on duty. Only I know all of the safeguards, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “And if something happens to you?” Luis asked.

  “My friend, if something happens to me, you’ve got much bigger issues than how many gunports there are in the walls.” She cast a quick look back at us. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve made provisions for information to be available if you need it, but my goal is that you never do. Clear?”

  “Clear,” Luis said. “But I don’t like it.”

  “Nobody said you had to. This is why I’d rather you’d handed the girl over at the rendezvous and stepped aside; everybody involved wants to overrule everyone else for the good of the kids. We have a chain of command here, and you’re going to obey it or leave.”

  That was blunt, and it had the ring of absolute authority. I exchanged looks with Luis, shrugged, and followed Marion.

  I spared a quick look for the entry hall, which was warmly furnished in wood paneling and comfortable chairs and sofas, but with a faintly new feel to it. This building hadn’t been standing for long, or if it had, it had been repurposed and redecorated.

  I noticed there were no windows in the entry hall, and a quick check on the aetheric told me that it was less a room than a fortress. Anyone entering this far could be sealed here, in a room thick with concrete and reinforced with steel, and safely dispatched from a distance.

  However, the alarms didn’t sound, and the steel fire doors didn’t drop to seal us in. We passed through, into what was a meeting room of some kind, with a large oval-shaped table and several matching chairs. And windows, although reinforced with wire and aetheric security. All seemed quite new, again. Marion rolled herself up to a gap where a chair would have gone, and indicated two others for us to take across from her. There was a bowl of fruit, and Luis reached in and grabbed an apple, which he tossed to me, then picked out a banana for himself, which he peeled while Marion fixed us with a silent, assessing gaze. Luis didn’t seem bothered by her regard in the slightest. He seemed more concerned with the brown spots on the fruit.

  I followed his example, took a quick, crunchy bite of the apple, and chewed the sweet, tough fiber with gusto.

  Marion snorted. “Yeah, you’re cool, you two—I get it. Lucky for me, I’ve been cracking tougher nuts than you my whole career, children, so let’s drop the drama. Thank you for bringing the girl. It’s going to save everyone a lot of trauma, not least little Isabel.”

  “Ibby,” I said. “She prefers to be called Ibby.”

  “I’ll make sure everyone knows. We want her to feel safe here, and at home.” There was a manila folder sitting on the table in front of her, and Marion opened it and glanced inside. There were photographs; one was of Isabel, gap-toothed and smiling eagerly. The other was a family photo of Manny, Angela, and Isabel. I recognized the picture, because Luis carried one in his wallet and there was another framed on the mantel inside his house.

  It was the last photo they had taken together before Manny and Angela had been gunned down.

  “When exactly did the girl show her first signs of talent?” Marion asked. Luis took a bite of banana and shook his head. “Did her mother or father ever indicate they thought she might be manifesting any—”

  “Nothing,” Luis said bluntly. “Ibby was a normal kid, normal and sweet and perfect, right up until the moment she got snatched out of her grandmother’s house. What they did to her made her like this ... It’s not normal.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Yeah? You aware that they took these kids in for weird tests every day? That the ones that failed got thrown out to live like little animals or die? That Ibby was one of the ones they decided to keep, and when they realized they couldn’t make her believe we didn’t love her they got inside her head and made her think I was dead and Cass had killed me? They showed it to her, Marion. Showed me burning to death, to a kid her age who’d already seen both her parents die.” Luis tossed his half-eaten banana on the table and sat back, crossing his arms. “Jesus, what’s normal about her now? She wanted to protect herself. She wanted revenge. So she not only let them jump-start her powers; she worked at it—she wanted it. She was scared to death. And what you get out of that is one hell of a strong Warden, untrained, way too young to handle that power.”

  Marion let him finish without saying a word, then looked down at her folder before she said, “I’m sorry that she’s endured so much. I wish I could say it would get easier for her, but the simple fact is that it won’t. There are only three paths from this point: She controls her powers; we shut down her powers; or she becomes a rogue.” What Marion kindly didn’t say was that there was a fourth option: death. Luis and I were already acutely aware of it.

  “She’s not turning rogue,” Luis said. “She’s got control.”

  “Luis, be sensible. She’s six years old. No one, anywhere, has control at that age, especially of the kinds of powers she’s manifesting. It’d be one thing if she’d stopped using them immediately after leaving Pearl’s control, but that’s not what’s happened, is it? She’s used her powers steadily since leaving the Ranch.”

  “Under our supervision, yeah. What else were we supposed to do? Pretend like she didn’t have them? She wanted to act like a Warden, like her dad would have wanted. I’m not going to tell the kid she can’t help when she can save lives.”

  “And so you brought her in direct contact—into conflict—with children with whom she trained at the Ranch. Do you think that was a good idea?”

  Luis didn’t answer, partly because he was getting angry and partly because—I felt—he knew she was right. I stepped in. “With respect, Warden, there are few who could effectively counter these children. Is that not why you’ve set up this school? To handle the most dangerous yet most promising of them?”

  She smiled, but didn’t raise her gaze to meet mine. “Do you think we have that simple an agenda?”

  “Surely you are not using them for another purpose.” That gave me a very unpleasant sensation in the pit of my stomach that would rapidly build to fury. “These children have been used enough.”

  This time she looked up, and her eyes were calm and direct. “I am not planning on indoctrinating them in any way,” she said, “other than by teaching them to properly use and judge their own strength and powers. But eventually they will be used, Cassiel, or they will be destroyed—make no mistake. Perhaps you’re not aware how dire the Wardens’ situation has become. There are things stirring beyond Pearl, and we have lost many, many more Wardens and Djinn than we could afford. So eventually these kids will have to fight. It’s my job to ensu
re that they fight well, and for the right side.” When Luis started to speak, she cut him off. “Don’t think I feel good about that, boy, because I don’t. These are children. They’re our own, and they should be loved and protected, and they’ve already been injured. But they may well be the only hope we have left, in the end.”

  Marion’s words were bleak, and I sensed the conviction underlying them. “The Wardens who followed Joanne Baldwin and the leader of the New Djinn, David,” I said. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody does, at the moment. They’ve been out of touch for a long time, and it doesn’t look good. We have to consider the strong possibility that they may not come back, and that’s an enormous blow. Possibly a killing one.”

  That was a sobering thought—that the best and brightest, not just of the Wardens but of the Djinn as well, could already have been lost, somewhere far out to sea. “How many are left?”

  “Wardens? Besides those here, about fifty, scattered across the United States, Canada, and South America. Maybe another two hundred in Europe and across Asia. Not so many, comes down to it, and most of them are scared out of their minds, and were second-rank talents to begin with.” She smiled slightly, but very grimly. “Present company excluded, of course. I had to fight some pretty heavy battles with Lewis to keep you two here.” Lewis being the head of the Wardens’ organization, and without question the most powerful Warden of them all.

  “Yeah, in the middle of you describing how we’re all going to die, I’m going to worry about not getting flattered,” Luis said. “Seriously, that’s all? What about Djinn?”

  “The ones who follow Ashan won’t communicate at all, so we have no idea of their strength, or if they’d lift a finger to help us anyway. David’s followers are working with us, and they’re all that’s held things together this long—but there aren’t many who can be truly relied upon. They’re Djinn. You can’t assume they’ll be willing to do it forever, or even into the next moment.” A glance at me. “No offense.”

  “I take none,” I said. “Because you’re correct. Djinn will have little patience for the problems of Wardens, in the end. You’ve done little enough the past few thousand years to earn our trust, or our respect. Were I still Djinn, I would ignore you just as Ashan has done.”

  That might have been too much honesty, considering the look that Luis gave me. I shrugged. It was the truth.

  “What about Ibby?” Luis said. “I want to know what you’re going to do to help her. And I’d better hear everything, not just the sunny-side-up version—”

  He would have continued, but there was a sudden shift in the mood of the room, something subtle but unmistakable. Marion shifted her weight in her wheelchair, staring behind her at the doorway, which banged open without so much as a courtesy knock.

  “You’d better come,” Ben said. The young Warden looked out of breath, and his aura almost sizzled with alarm. “It’s Isabel. It’s started.”

  We passed through a series of doors that I was certain were as secure as might be found in any prison, but I scarcely noticed, and I knew they made no impression on Luis. Nothing did—not the number of rooms, nor the number of people we passed. The only thing he was focused on was Isabel.

  I confess, I was not much different.

  Marion’s wheelchair was capable of great bursts of speed, and she quickly outdistanced us, shouting as she went, “Make a hole! Make a hole, people!” There must have been bodies in the way for her to make that outcry, but by the time we reached the blockage it was gone, withdrawn into the corners of the rooms. I had a blurred impression of children whispering, of older Wardens comforting them, and then Marion’s electric engine was slowing, bringing her chair to a gliding halt. Luis and I caught up only seconds later, but Marion blocked our way into the room—perhaps deliberately.

  The room we saw through the doorway was small but comfortable—a twin bed, a small dresser and mirror, a chest in the corner, a television set, games, toys. It was a child’s room, but impersonal as yet, without a stamp of personality on it. Isabel’s new home. Spike’s tiny desert in its plastic container sat on one of the tables, and the lizard was watching all the furor in the room with perky, unemotional interest.

  Ibby lay on the floor next to the bed, curled into a ball with her dark hair covering her face. Her whole body was shuddering, and she was sobbing wildly. Next to her sat Janice. The grandmotherly woman was trying to comfort Ibby, but each time she tried to touch her, Isabel flinched and screamed, and the terror in it ripped through me like hooks through flesh.

  I didn’t think. I grabbed the handlebars of Marion’s wheelchair and hauled it out of my way, rushed in, and gathered Ibby into my arms, rocking her.

  She screamed again, fighting me. I caught my breath, feeling that scream break something inside of me with a harsh, glassy snap—not a bone but something more vital, more ephemeral.

  Had I been born human, it would have been a broken heart.

  “Hush,” I whispered, and held her tight, rocking her. “Hush, Ibby. I’m here. Nothing will hurt you now. Hush.”

  She collapsed against me like a wet doll, gasping for breath in damp hitches. “It hurts,” she whispered, a bare breath of sound. “It hurts inside and I can’t make it stop, Cassie. Please make it stop!”

  I felt cold, and looked across at Janice, whose creased face was set in lines of grim sadness. I turned my attention to Ibby, using Oversight, mapping out the aetheric emanations of her body and spirit.

  She was burning so brightly that it seemed to sear my inner eyes. I couldn’t distinguish colors, only an out-of-control conflagration of power that held a bloody core of violent crimson.

  Something was wrong, very wrong. I’d seen her in pain before, but not like this.

  “Hush,” I whispered again, and kissed her forehead. It burned, too, with an unnatural kind of fever. “Hush, my love, you’re safe now. I won’t let anything harm you.”

  She cried for what seemed like an eternity, but eventually I felt the heat begin to cool inside her, and her tormented little body stilled in my arms, falling into a dazed sleep. It wasn’t healthy, not in any way. I looked up, and saw that Luis was crouched next to me, staring at Ibby with a ghostly pallor on his face. Marion, beyond him, looked grim, as did Janice. I saw Janice shake her head in response to a silent question from the wheelchair-bound Warden.

  Janice reached for Ibby. I hesitated. “Let me have her,” she said quietly. “She’ll be all right for a while now. She’ll sleep. I can do her some good.”

  I sensed nothing from the woman but a sad pity, and I finally allowed her to take Ibby from my arms. The absence of her warm weight hurt in ways I couldn’t define, and I had to fight the urge to cry out.

  Luis put his hand on my shoulder, feeling what I felt, and looked at Marion. “What the hell happened to her?”

  She exchanged another look with Janice as the older woman put Ibby in bed and drew the covers up around her chin. “We’d better talk,” Marion said. “This way.”

  She led us back through the rooms and hallways, moving slowly this time, stopping to flash reassuring smiles at anxious children and Wardens. “Everything’s fine,” she said, again and again.

  I knew she was lying, but there was no point in challenging her here, in front of those she was protecting.

  She dropped the reassurance as soon as the doors were shut and we were locked into the conference room once again. Luis didn’t hesitate. “What the hell just happened?” he demanded again, and, instead of sitting as she indicated, loomed over her to force her to look straight up. “What did you do to her?”

  She did, without a trace of discomfort. “You may have noticed,” she said, “that these days, most people are taller than I am. Please sit. I know you’re upset, but that won’t help the situation.”

  He was angry, but he wasn’t insensitive (although I was tempted to be); he pulled out a chair from the table and sat down across from her, straddling it backward an
d crossing his arms over the top. I followed his lead, sitting a little farther away, just in case I needed for any reason to serve as backup.

  Not that it would come to a fight, I hoped.

  “Now,” Luis said. “What did you do to Ibby?”

  Marion sighed. “Nothing, I’m afraid. Your niece, like all the children in this facility, has had the channels that carry power forced open—nerves that weren’t developed and mature enough to carry the kind of signals that Warden powers generate. It’s very rare for a young potential Warden to manifest anything before the age of puberty, because that level of development is all-important. These children—” She paused and shook her head. “I don’t like putting it this way, but it was a kind of clinical, cold rape, and it has consequences. What we will do here is try to repair the damage that’s been done, because the nerves themselves are still immature and raw, and the power they’re channeling is far too great. We have to contain it while the damage is healing. In your niece’s case, we’ll put in limiters to control her power flows. She won’t be of any immediate use to anyone, not until she’s healed enough to handle things on her own.”

  Luis was silent—shaken, I could feel that. He’d just been told, very bluntly, what he already knew, but in a way that brought it home to him in visceral terms. He didn’t know what to say, except, “That doesn’t answer my question. What just happened to her now?”

  “What you just saw is the first signs that her body’s defenses are fighting against what’s been done to her. Once that cycle of feedback begins, it’s very dangerous, both to Ibby and to everyone around her, because in a very real sense, she is fighting herself.” Marion hesitated, then said, “It will get worse, I’m afraid. Much worse.”

  Luis swallowed. “How much worse?”

  Marion regarded us both steadily and sadly. “These children are like road flares,” she said. “They burn very hot, and very fast, and with very little control. Once their bodies begin acting against them, they burn themselves out quickly. I’m sorry, but the more your niece used her power, the more she damaged her ability to regulate it. ... Think of it as developing a potentially fatal allergy. At the rate she’s going, even if she avoids the obvious mistakes, she’ll still be dead before she reaches puberty. Her body simply can’t sustain the level of power being channeled through it, and with the body’s instinct to fight the damage, it’ll be further and irrevocably destroyed. It will cannibalize itself to keep going, but at a certain point, it won’t be able to survive.”