Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(43)

The rudeness. How he hated rudeness.

He punched the code into the keypad of Geoff’s room. Inside, Maura and Daniel were dutifully massaging Geoff’s wasted limbs.

Geoff’s skin was a pasty, blue-veined, grayish white. His long form was skeletal. Assiduous massages, stretching, and electric stimulation kept his tendons from tightening and turning him into a clawed, hunched cripple, so that when he finally did consent to come out of his mental fortress, his body would be ready to receive him. As ready as his father’s will and resources could render it.

Seventeen years he had been like this. Seventeen endless years.

“Leave us,” Greaves said.

Maura hesitated, wary of a trap to test her dedication. “Ah, there are still sixteen minutes left for this massage session, sir,” she said. “You told us that we must not for any reason skip or shorten—”

“I said, leave us! I will finish the session myself. Out!”

Dan and Maura peeled off their latex gloves and scurried out.

Greaves approached the padded table, with its sheepskin covering. Soft and yielding, to constantly stimulate Geoff’s mottled, prone-to-ulcers skin. Geoff was continually turned, continually massaged, disinfected, and exfoliated, his skin hydrated with carefuly formulated unguents to improve his circulation.

Greaves stared down at his son’s skull-like face. His thin, fragile skin was pulled taut across strong cheekbones. The slack mouth, the sunken eyes, the eyelids a fragile, veined blue-violet.

Geoff’s bone structure was so like Greaves’ own face, but the resemblance was no longer possible to see, his son was so pitifully thin. Geoff used to have Carol’s glorious golden hair, but it had thinned to a sparse, colorless fuzz, unsavory flakes of dead skin suspended in it. Geoff lay on his side, clad in briefs, his limbs twined with the snaking tubes that were permanently lodged in his orifices.

Greaves ignored the large box of sterile latex gloves mandated for the medics to use when they handled his son’s body, and scooped up a handful of the thick unguent, going to work on Geoff’s left leg. The slow, rhythmic, familiar movements soothed him. He massaged Geoff often.

His son seemed even thinner than usual. He should tell the medics to up the caloric load in the IV drip. Or to increase the duration of the muscle stimluation sessions, though the sessions he dictated were already many times over what any physiotherapist would recommend, or even consider useful.

But why not? It wasn’t as if Geoff had anything better to do. Greaves had no constraints of budget or time. He could hire a staff of fifty or five hundred to work on Geoff around the clock. And would do so, in a heartbeat, if only it would help.

His anger bubbled up, over, and out. “You were unfair,” he announced, as his hands slid up and down Geoff’s shriveled calf. “You and your mother both. You refused to listen to reason.”

The silence that answered him was eloquent. Carol had been a master of the speaking silence, since he met her back in middle school in Blaine, Oregon, and Geoff had inherited her gift. He had always read the subtext of Carol’s silent protests with ease. Even before the brutal experiments that had jolted his psi to life.

It was one of the things she had loved about him, at first, when they were young and madly in love. Him, heading off to Germany, a private first class in the army. She, already pregnant with Geoff, stuck back in Blaine, in her mother’s trailer. He’d sworn to break her out of that place someday, as if it were Alcatraz. It hadn’t proven to be so easy.

Then, one day, on the base in West Germany, he’d gotten the call. He’d been chosen for a special assignment. A secret training protocol, run by the legendary Colonel Holt. A small group of soldiers had been selected, based on some rare gift that testing had revealed. Colonel Holt had explained that if these gifts could be developed, they would be incredible assets for their country. The training was rigorous, and he would be moved to another facility, isolated from his buddies, unable to tell his family back home what he was doing, or where. But his family would be well taken care of. Until he could see them again, which might be quite some time.

Of course, he’d consented. Who didn’t want to be an incredible asset for one’s country? Particularly if it benefited Carol and Geoff.

He couldn’t have known what the “training” would be. The pain was crushing. The blood vessel-bursting, crazy-making agony of those torture sessions with Colonel Holt had almost driven him mad. Each one had left him helpless, unable to move, speak, even turn his head. He spent weeks unable to do anything but rock in his cot, hiding from the light, flinching at the faintest sound. He’d hoped for death, but he didn’t die. He’d healed. And changed.

Oh, how he had changed.

Gradually, he’d discovered that he could do those things that Colonel Holt wanted from him, and more. He also realized quickly that he had to underplay his abilities, out of self-defense. He was quite sure that no one had ever intended for him to develop this much power.

Colonel Holt clearly had suspicions, but that didn’t stop him from using Greaves for years to conduct intelligence missions, using his telepathy to gather crucial intel for national security. Greaves never let on about his growing capacities for telekinesis and coercion, or his burgeoning ability to organize, multitask, assimilate, and organize information. There were other talents, too, hard to pinpoint or define.

His cognitive ability skyrocketed. He could learn a language in a few days, sound like a native, and retain the knowledge like a bear trap. One dull weekend, he’d taken on the stock market and all of its tricks and games, and over the following weeks had earned a fortune by investing and deftly reinvesting his earnings.