Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(69)

All three of them, Mark, Jennifer, and Heather, had experienced it, although the effects had been different for each. Apparently, gaining the use of the other ninety percent of your brain still left room for plenty of individual differences.

No longer requiring sleep left plenty of extra time for thinking. It was something Mark was thankful for. The days were filled so full of activities that there was little time for learning about the ongoing changes to his mind and body.

The list of changes scrolled through his mind: strength and reflexes that were off the charts, perfect memory, enhanced hearing, enhanced vision, speed reading. Although his thought processes were up across the board, he had acquired a special affinity for languages that was every bit as amazing as Heather’s savant mathematical abilities and Jennifer’s computer wizardry. It had gotten to the point that his mind could master a language as he listened to it or read it.

Mark had discovered another odd ability by accident, during one of his language practice sessions. He had been listening to a language tape, copying the native speakers’ pronunciations and intonations when Jennifer had walked into his room.

“You sound just like the people on the tape.”

“Thanks,” Mark had replied.

“No. I mean exactly like them,” Jennifer had said. “The men and the women.”

“Right.”

“Play it back in your head if you don’t want to believe me,” Jennifer had called over her shoulder as she ducked back out into the hallway.

As he thought back on it now, his twin sister had been right. Replaying the scene in his mind, he compared the sound that had come from his mouth to that from the tape. He had been so intent upon matching the tones of the native speakers that he had somehow managed to mimic their voices so effectively he could barely hear any difference from the original.

He would have been thrilled with his progress if not for the difficulties he had been having controlling his emotions. Yesterday he had even snapped at his mother, an action that brought tears to her eyes. And although he had apologized, guilt had plagued him the rest of the day.

Without a doubt, Mark’s raging adrenaline rushes presented such a danger that he had been focusing his attention on finding a way to control them. So far, he had enjoyed only limited success. Meditation worked but wasn’t practical. Most situations that produced an emotional response found him in the middle of an activity, which provided no opportunity to sit down, cross his legs, and achieve a meditative state.

While meditation had its limitations, it provided complete relief, something that had led Mark to practice it every chance he got. He had read every book and article he could get his hands on about the various meditation techniques.

A Rosicrucian technique had become his favorite, allowing him to achieve the feeling that his mind was truly disconnected from his body, free to float around as he willed it. Starting with a sequence of deep, slow breaths, Mark focused on feeling just his toes, one at a time. Once his mind was completely focused on a single toe, he would allow his consciousness to move to the next one, gradually working his way up the body until it got to his scalp. Although the technique took a considerable amount of time, the euphoria he felt upon completing the exercise made him reluctant to come back down. Mark was sure that the key to self-control lay buried in a deeper understanding and skill with meditation, but so far that key had eluded him.

Sitting there in the darkness, a sudden sense of being watched nudged him, the intensity of the feeling making his scalp tingle.

Night’s blackness draped the outside of his window, its face unbroken by any hint of a presence there. His door was closed, and there was no sign that someone stood waiting just beyond that. Mark’s senses heightened to a level that he could taste the air moving in and out of his mouth. He allowed them to sweep the room free from his conscious will, relying on the thought that whatever hidden clue had alerted him would guide him to the source.

Down the hall, he could hear Jennifer’s rhythmic breathing. No doubt she was as awake as he was, lost in her own thoughts and meditations.

Whatever it was that had disturbed him felt closer than Jennifer. Not far at all. The conviction that something was here in the room with him grew stronger with each passing second, although he couldn’t see anything that appeared to be out of place.

The glowing red numerals on the clock beside his bed shifted to 4:24 a.m. The subtle change in room lighting would have been nearly invisible to him only a few months earlier, but now the slight shift in intensity pulled his gaze to a spot an arm’s length past the foot of his bed, just below eye level. There was nothing there, just a general sense of wrongness about that point in space.

As Mark focused his vision at that spot, the clock numerals changed once again. It happened so quickly that he could almost believe he had imagined it, but he hadn’t. Mark played the scene back in his mind. In that instant when the light had changed, the smallest of glints had reflected back at him, as if from a tiny bubble of dew at the tip of a blade of grass.

Swinging his legs out from under the covers, Mark rose from the bed, keeping his eyes locked on the tiny pinpoint of wrongness as he moved slowly toward it. Whatever it was, it was damn hard to see, even with his enhanced neural pathways processing the data. Reaching a spot only a couple of feet away from whatever it was, Mark stopped.

Despite the dim light, he could now see the distortion more clearly. There was nothing there except for a pinpoint that blurred his vision of what lay beyond. There was no sign of whatever might be causing the distortion.