CHAPTER TEN - SADIE
I only know a few things to be true at this point.
First, I came from Prodigy School. I feel this. The name means something to me. Obviously, Thomas came from there too, which makes us… somewhat similar. He wasn’t lying about that stuff. I really do believe I was sent to kill him.
Second, I’m an illusionist. Which makes me… abnormal. But I don’t seem bothered by it.
Third, I feel calm. It’s weird because there is some kind of cell or muscle memory inside me that knows… I’m not usually a calm person.
This is the part that’s bothering me. Because I get the feeling that Thomas isn’t normally this calm either.
There’s a dark side to us both.
And then the memory of the nightmare is back. His lips on my lips. His hand on my hip. How it slipped between my legs and made me wet—
“Are you getting out of the car?”
I look up and find Thomas standing at my side, the passenger door open, two thick brown paper bags in his arms filled with our food.
“Yes,” I say, letting the dark side drift away as I step out of the car, grab the bags of clothes, bump the door closed with my hip, and follow him down the long, dark hallway to the bunker entrance.
That’s what this is. A bunker. Real end-of-the-world type stuff.
“Do you think something bad is going to happen?” I ask, following Thomas into the corner of the large open room that acts like a kitchen. There’s one long counter, a cooktop stove, and a refrigerator. It’s all new, but nothing matches. Like he pieced this place together from leftovers.
He empties the two large bags and puts things away. “I’ve never done this before,” I say, mostly to myself.
“How do you know?” Thomas asks, not looking at me.
“I just know.”
“Are your memories coming back?”
“No.”
I catch him looking at me from the corner of his eye. I don’t think he believes me. “You’re very quiet, Sadie. It worries me.”
“Why?” I ask
“Because quiet people are often thinkers. So you’re thinking right now. What are you thinking about?”
“The nightmare,” I say, then wonder why I said it.
“Tell me about it,” he says, finishing up with the groceries and walking over to the large bank of screens. They are all maps. Satellite maps. He sits in his chair and nods his head at me. “Pull that one up so I can try to explain a few things.”
I look over at an office chair along the wall, walk over to it, and wheel it back to his desk. I sit. Breathe through the silence as I watch him pull up new maps.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks, pointing to the center screen.
“Cathedral City,” I say. “City Park.”
“How do you know that?” he asks.
I point to the screen. “The town towers. I recognize them now. I know I said I didn’t during our escape, but I do now. It’s coming back, I think. My memory.”
“Interesting,” he says. “That you recognize them but not a grocery store.”
“Look,” I say, becoming frustrated and maybe even a little mad. “I don’t know how, OK? I don’t understand anything that’s happening to me. If you don’t want me here—if you don’t trust me—then I’ll leave. I’ll figure it out on my own.”
“Settle down,” he says, still working with the maps. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m just trying to make you think about things. You can’t kill me, Sadie. So let’s just get that out in the open right now. If you try, you’ll die. I don’t want to hurt you, so I’d prefer that you don’t try.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Which part don’t I know? Because I’m the one with all the memories, Sadie. I’m the one with perfect recall of what they did to me. What they made me. What I’m capable of. And you saw it back there at the hospital. You saw what I can do.”
“It had no effect on me.” I shrug.
“No effect?” He laughs. “I knocked your fucking programming right out of your mind. Wiped it away. You’re a shell right now. I did that to you.”
I look up at him. He’s staring at me with an intensity I haven’t seen before. Granted, I’ve known him like one day. But so far he’s been calm, collected, and completely in control. This new look says he might not stay that way. “It’s only temporary.”
“My point is,” he growls, “you don’t stand a chance against me one on one. That’s all. I’m not worried about you killing me. But I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I don’t need his protection, I decide. I have nothing to back up this feeling, but I know it. I’m surer about this guess than anything else.
I am something unique. Special. Capable, and strong, and… deadly.
I don’t need his protection.
“I thought we were talking about maps,” I say in a cool, calm voice. “You had something to tell me.”
He lets out a long, frustrated exhale. “OK, so you know this is City Park in Cathedral City and these are the City Towers. But do you know what they do?”
I shrug. “Broadcast,” I say. “Some kind of wave. Obviously. That’s why one builds towers.”
“Yes,” Thomas says, his eyes brightening at my deduction. “Yes. My towers broadcast signals.”
“What kind of signals?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at me, but I can see the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile. “Dangerous things.”
“Like radiation?”
“No,” he says, turning his head slightly so I can see him in profile. “Like… well, it’s complicated. Sound and light are strange things, Sadie. Powerful things. We’re just at the very early stages of understanding them. But they are weak in some respects. You need a receiving device. Like a phone. And…” He turns his head to hide his smile. “A tablet, in our situation.”
“Whose situation?” I ask.
“My friends and me. Do you remember—” Then he stops. “No, you wouldn’t. Several months ago, terrorists blew up all the cell phone towers around Cathedral City. But lucky for the citizens of this great city, I had others in place. What I didn’t have was a cell phone company. I deal in satellite phones, you see. So in order to restore wireless phones to the area, I gave everyone in the city one of my sat phones and put them on my network.”
“Sounds pretty ominous, Thomas.”
“Oh”—he laughs—“it gets much better than this. You see, in order for a phone to be useful you have to have access to the satellite and you have to have a way to communicate with the satellite. Which is why I gave everyone in the city a free terminal.”
“You’re going to hurt these people?” I ask. He hesitates, and in those few seconds I realize—even if he says yes, I won’t be bothered by this admission.
Why do I feel this way?
“Not really,” he says. A noncommittal answer if ever there was one. “I am trying to hurt certain people. But not all people.”
“Which people?” I ask.
“Who do you think?”
“Prodigy people,” I say.
“Yes.” He turns to fully face me and the smile is back. “I’m going to hurt them, Sadie. And I’d like your help.”
I sigh. “I’m not much use like this. I know I have certain capabilities. But I get the feeling I have certain parameters that contain me as well.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do,” he says, chuckling. “But I can fix that. I can fix you, Sadie. I can take the parts they own and set them free. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Maybe you’re just one more really bad guy and I should leave all of you behind and find my own way in the world.”
“That’s one option, for sure. But if you stick it out with me we can rip the world apart and put it back together. Make it new, Sadie. Make it ours.”
“You realize you sound like a madman, right? This calm demeanor isn’t fooling me one bit.”
“I’m quite mad, yes. But not any more than the people who control you.”
“I’m not on your side,” I say.
“You can be on your own side. What a novel idea, right?”
“Why were you in that hospital?” I ask. There’s something really wrong with this man. Really wrong.
“They… compromised me. A few months back. When the cell towers were blown up. I have a unique body chemistry that requires careful manipulation.”
“Your mentalist capabilities?”
“Exactly. But they compromised my friends. One of them shot me with a drug that disrupted my brain chemistry. I went… a little mad. And then they had me locked up. It was the perfect opportunity for them to try to get the upper hand.”
“Who?” I ask. “Who did all this?”
“Yasmine, I think. But I’m not sure.”
“The doctor?”
“Her. And others I haven’t identified yet. You see, there are two sides to this story. Us and them. But both sides are trying to do the same thing. Albeit for very different reasons.”
“Why do you want me?”
“Because you’re special, Sadie. So obviously special.” His hand comes up to my cheek, petting it. The way he—whoever—was petting my hair last night. It was him. I’m sure of it. Thomas Brooks drugged me and touched me, then tried to pass it off as a nightmare.
“Don’t,” I say, slapping his hand away. “Don’t do that. I know what you did.”
He pulls his hand back. Chastised. “I’m just trying to give you options.”
“By taking off all my clothes and tying me up? By… violating me?”
“What?” He laughs. This time the smile is different. Real. Not on the verge of diabolic. “I didn’t tie you up. When the fuck would I have done that? You were sleeping for twelve hours.”
“While I was sleeping,” I say, angry at his manipulation. “You touched me.”
His eyebrows knit together as he squints at me. “Touched you… where?”
Asshole.
But I stay silent. I’m not going to describe what happened last night and give him a thrill. I refuse.
“It was a nightmare, Sadie. I’m sure those things probably did happen at some point in our past, but I wasn’t the one who did them.”
Could it be true? I have no idea. Was it him? Was it just a sad, lost memory floating to the surface under trauma?
The fact that I’m considering this—that I’m so confused about it—leads me to believe him when he says the Prodigy people are cruel and mean. I know that, just as I know the few other things about myself without actually remembering them.
Could my experience have happened in my head last night, and nowhere else? Am I nothing more than the residual effects of my life that came before Thomas?
I decide to change the subject. “Why was I at the hospital?”
“To kill me,” he says.
“But you already said I can’t kill you. Wouldn’t these people know that?”
“I’m sure they figured they had a way past my protection. My power. Perhaps Yasmine’s drug wasn’t in their plans.”
“But if she’s on their side—”
He points his finger at me. “Maybe she’s not. Maybe we have two enemies, Sadie? Ever think of that? Maybe what Yasmine did was not part of their plan. And that drug she gave me unleashed the power of my mind. A power I’ve held tightly in control since I walked out of that burning Prodigy building fifteen years ago? Maybe,” he says, “what Yasmine did went against what they were doing.”
A flashing red alert races through my mind. Abort! Abort! Abort! I put my hands to my head, trying to make it go away.
“You remember something?” Thomas asks, a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Something flashing across my eyes. The word ‘abort’ in red letters.”
“See,” he says, like I just confirmed his theory. “Prodigy sent you, but they didn’t expect Yasmine to unleash me. Maybe you can kill me, Sadie. Or could, I should say. Maybe before Yasmine released my mind from the grip of the drugs I’ve used to hold it prisoner, you had that power. But it’s gone now. I assure you. It’s gone now. I am the most powerful weapon to ever come out of a Prodigy School.”
Until me, I think.
And I have no idea where that came from.
But like everything else popping into my head today—I know it to be true.
“We’d make a good team,” he says, grabbing the arm of my office chair and pulling me closer to him. “Think about it. They wouldn’t send you if you weren’t powerful. Mentalist is the most powerful weapon they can produce from the kids. But illusionist is pretty powerful too. We’re perfect, Sadie. We’re practically meant for each other.”
His hand is back on my cheek. Softly stroking me as he looks down into my eyes. When I don’t stop him, he leans in. His soft lips brush against mine, just like in the nightmare last night.
I kiss him back this time too. I wait for his wandering hand to slip between my legs and make me feel the pressure of his fingers against my sex.
But he just pulls back. Smiling. “See,” he says in a soft, low voice. “See how perfect we are?”
I bite my lip and inhale deeply.
“We can change things, Sadie. We can make them pay for turning us into little science projects. For stealing our childhoods away. Taking our innocence. Us,” he whispers as his mouth covers mine once again. “We are the enemy they’ve been waiting for.”
I give in. Hell, who am I kidding? I practically melt against him. I want more. I want him to touch me again. I want him to take what he wants and not ask for permission. I want him to control me the way they did. I want my submission to set me free.
“I need it,” I whisper.
“What?” he answers back. Kissing me one more time. “What do you need?”
But I can’t say it out loud. I can’t admit what I really want. So I say, “A friend.”
“I’ll be your friend, Sadie. Just trust me. We’ll be good together, I promise.”