Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(57)

"Right. We need to let him feed in the coordinates of a building, and then we establish a link from here, feeding the information across the QT link to Jack's computer."

"I can do better than that if we can get the subspace transmitter working in time," said Jennifer. "I can drop a program on Jack's machine that will let him log in to our system here and do the search himself."

Heather's eyes narrowed. "I don't think it's a good idea to give him that kind of control of our subspace transmitter."

"We would still be in control," Jennifer continued. "We could limit him any way we wanted to. Maybe we would just give him a couple of hours of access on certain days. And we could monitor whatever he was doing."

Mark sat down on a stool on the other side of the workbench. "Jack would figure we were monitoring him."

"Sure. That's his problem."

Heather shook her head. “I don’t like helping Jack search for people he is probably going to kill.”

Before Mark could respond, Jennifer leaned toward Heather. “We can’t control what Jack does. We can only hope that he’s on our side.”

As the three teens glanced from one to the other, Mark stood up.

"Then I guess you two better get this thing working before we run out of time."

"Where are you going?" Jennifer asked.

"For someone who does whatever she wants without telling us, you're awfully nosey."

"Fine. Forget it."

"I will."

The door slammed behind Mark before Heather could interject. Jennifer scowled after him, then turned her attention back to the computer. Deciding there was nothing she could say to break the icy quiet, Heather focused her thoughts back on the theoretical problem at hand.

Three days to produce a breakthrough of this magnitude wasn't much time. But if they were going to have any chance to pull it off, Jennifer was going to need her help. Maybe if she focused hard enough, she could forget about the psychiatrist and the possibility that she might be going crazy.





55


Mark's pace quickened, his anger rising as the front door slammed behind him. As he stepped out onto the street, he broke into a ground-burning jog, nothing fast enough to attract attention, just enough to burn off some of the energy building up within him.

He could feel his heart thundering in his chest, pumping blood through his body in massive pulses, which only fed his need to hit someone. Mark knew something was wrong with him. He had known it since their last experience in the alien ship. Ever since that day, his emotions had been jacked up, leaving him feeling stretched taught, a pinprick away from an explosion.

It wasn't just anger either. Every emotion had been amplified so heavily that he felt like someone had shot him with an elephant-sized dose of adrenaline. Right now, the only thing he knew to control it was to get away from everyone.

In addition to his becoming an adrenaline junky, there were other changes going on with his body. For one thing, Mark wasn't sleeping. He just didn't feel the need. That was one change that didn't bother him. Although he had to stay in his room so that his parents wouldn't discover his sleepless nights, he had used the time to practice his speed reading. The only problem he had run into with that practice was difficulty in turning the pages fast enough.

Another nighttime activity he had taken to was meditation. He had thought that if he could improve his already considerable meditation skills, then perhaps he could get control of the emotional thunderstorms that raged through his brain and body. However, when the adrenaline rushes hit, he had no time to begin a meditation, and once he was in thrall to the attack, it took several minutes of concentration to restore a quiet to his mind.

His workouts helped, so he had thrown himself into a routine that even an Olympian would have found exhausting. Now, as Mark turned off the street, cutting out onto a bike trail into the woods, he could feel the muscles rippling beneath his skin. He had certainly put on some more muscle mass, but he wasn't bulked out. Ripped was the word that popped into his mind.

A stiff breeze had sprung up, carrying with it eddies of coolness that hinted at a coming storm. As the trail opened out onto the ridgeline, Mark could see the line of thunderheads in the distance, dark streaks of rain hanging like a curtain below them.

Good. Let the rain come. Maybe it would cool his overheated brain.

Mark increased his pace. It felt good to stretch out into a real run. His sister's angry face swam into his mind. Shit, after the way he had treated her, Jen had a right to be angry. Mark knew he should already be over his own anger at what she had done. Shutting down the ship had probably been what they would have done even if they had talked it over first. He should have already forgiven her, but he just couldn't.

The first drop of rain smacked him in the face, the big, fat globule splattering on his forehead as twin forks of lightning split the sky across the canyon. Mark's eyes focused on the scene ahead. Christ. He didn't think he had been running that long.

Half a mile ahead, the finger of land they called The Mesa came to a point, below which the Second Ship rested in its cave. But the spot no longer resembled the place they had come to know so well.

Military vehicles had been parked in precisely aligned rows just inside a newly erected chain-link fence topped with concertina razor wire. A guard bunker abutted the gate, and though he could imagine guards with machine guns pointed outward, Mark was unable to see them in the gathering darkness of the storm.