Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(40)
She glanced at the clock beside the bed. 5:30 a.m., same as in the dream. Well she damn sure wasn’t going downstairs to make some tea. Not this morning.
As Heather stared at the clock, waiting for it to tick to 5:31, a new worry settled over her. She hadn’t been able to remember her dreams for weeks now. Every morning she awoke knowing that she had been dreaming but dreading the thought of remembering them. Even worse, now that she had remembered this one, she had the distinct feeling that it was the least threatening of them all.
If the dreams were bad, her waking hallucinations were worse. Thinking back, she identified the day, three weeks ago, when she had quit seeing numbers in her mind and started seeing visions. In a weird way, it made sense. Programmers used mathematics to generate the fancy 3D imagery in video games and animated movies. Her mind had just gotten so good at math that the calculations now formed movies instead of equations. As scared as she had been during her original savant experience, this new phase horrified her beyond belief.
Several times she had caught herself briefly lapsing into a sequence of visions, each producing a variation on something she had been observing, each vision ending with a different predicted outcome. The visions had become so real that she had difficulty bringing herself back into the present. Anything might trigger them.
Yesterday, Heather’s mom had bumped into the back of a chair, triggering a sequence of visions of her mom falling and catching herself on the table, or tipping over the flowerpot, or cutting her arm on the vase. Always the visions converged into a single projected outcome, but for that brief instant in time, while under the influence of her waking dreams, Heather remained frozen, unable to move or respond.
Heather had once read about people who experienced fugues, trancelike states where they lost touch with reality. It was typical of the institutionalized insane. If this continued, it was only a matter of time until others began to notice. And it was getting worse.
Refocusing her attention on the clock, Heather saw that it read 5:34. Okay. That was probably different enough from the dream that she could go downstairs with some confidence. Pulling on her robe and slippers, Heather padded softly down to the kitchen and flipped on the light. Just to be sure, she made herself a cup of hot chocolate instead of her usual cup of tea. Something about that made her feel really stupid. Next thing you knew she would be hanging up horseshoes and tossing salt over her shoulder.
It just wasn’t fair. She was going to be a senior in high school. Wasn’t she supposed to be having fun, not worried about going insane? Dear God, why did they ever have to find that starship? Why couldn’t she just be normal?
A single teardrop rippled the thick surface of the dark brown liquid in her cup, but Heather, lost in yet another one of her newfound visions, didn’t notice.
37
Freddy Hagerman was used to cold trails, but this one had gone cold as a penguin’s ass. If it wasn’t for pure stubbornness, he would have given up a long time ago. Of course, knowing that he wouldn’t have a job to go back to if he didn’t come up with something had added a little extra motivation. Even so, amidst all the glowing interviews with the Rondham Institute staff and follow-ups with the cancer survivors, he had almost missed it.
Of the thirty-eight experimental subjects, he had tracked down all but one, a fourteen-year-old boy named Billy Randall. By all reports, Billy had been every bit as successful in his recovery as any of the other patients. But tragically, he and his entire family had been killed in an automobile accident on their drive back to Arizona, after his release from the institute. The horror of the news had shaken the small community of Wickenburg, Arizona, to its core.
The entire town had planned a welcome-home celebration, complete with banners and a parade. Instead, the collision between the family Taurus and a semi-truck just outside Barstow, California, had left the bodies so disfigured that the people of Wickenburg were left to bury three sealed caskets.
The thing that had attracted Freddy’s attention was the Barstow medical examiner’s report. Containing a detailed description of the fatal injuries suffered by each member of the Randall family, the report was well ordered and typical. It had taken Freddy three passes through it before he could place a cause for the feeling of wrongness.
All three family members had suffered fatal head injuries as several pipes from the semi’s load had penetrated into the car’s passenger compartment. Everything was thoroughly described in the report. There was absolutely nothing unusual about it.
There was only one problem with that. The car had been carrying one very unusual young man who had been injected with nanites derived from Rho Project research. Freddy had read Priest William’s journal, had seen the evidence of what those nanites could do. And even if these people should have been killed instantly, those microscopic machines didn’t just give up without trying to repair broken bodies. There should have been signs of unnatural healing on Billy’s corpse, even if that healing had not saved his life. But the report contained no mention of anything unusual about the boy’s mortal wounds.
Freddy straightened his aching back and looked up. It was unbelievable how many stars you could see at 2:00 a.m. in the high desert of Arizona, especially on a night with no moon. Well, staring at the stars wasn’t going to give him his answers.
Freddy stomped down, driving the shovel deep into the soft dirt. There was no way around it. He was going to have to see Billy Randall for himself.