Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(85)

“Hi, Mrs. McFarland. Jennifer had something she had to do, so it’s just me.”

Mrs. McFarland smiled as she continued toward the door to the garage. “It’s not that we’re not glad to see you, too. I’ve got some errands to run in town myself. There are some leftovers in the fridge if you kids get hungry.”

As the door closed behind her, Heather plopped down on the couch across from Mark. “Okay. Spill it. What happened with Jen?”

Mark shook his head. “Well you know how odd she’s been acting these last few weeks. Last night she snuck out and went to a party with some of the cheerleaders.”

Heather’s mouth dropped open. “Snuck out?”

“After Mom specifically told her she couldn’t go.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I didn’t believe it myself. Dad blew a fuse.”

“I can imagine. Have you talked to her? Jen must be pretty shaken up.”

“Not so you’d notice. I stuck my head into her room this morning and she was just sitting at her laptop like nothing had happened. She just laughed in my face when I asked about it.”

A frown spread across Heather’s face. “Mark, I’m really worried about her.”

“You and me both.”

“There’s something she’s not telling us. Ever since the science contest, her abilities have been changing in ways I don’t understand.”

“It started before that. I should have noticed it when she started jogging at night.”

“That doesn’t sound like her. When did she do that?”

“Shortly after school let out for the summer. I noticed it, but I was so wrapped up in what I was working on that I didn’t really press her about it.”

“How often was she doing it?”

“Every night, I think.”

Heather felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach. “She was going out to the ship!”

Mark slapped his palm to his forehead. “Damn it. Of course. That’s what she’s been hiding from us.”

“It explains how we got into that room we could never open before. Jen must have figured out how to access more of the ship’s computers. And somehow that closer link has changed her.”

“She’s taken the next step. But what are we supposed to do about it?”

Heather closed her eyes. She had the feeling that she should be able to see something important, something that she couldn’t quite pull to the forefront of her mind.

“I don’t know.”

Mark leaned forward, his deep brown eyes locking with hers. “There’s something else I want to discuss with you. Please don’t get mad at me.”

Heather felt herself tense. Oh great. Here it comes.

“It’s not just Jennifer that is changing,” Mark continued. “It’s all of us. She’s just changed faster than us, most likely because of her visits to the ship. But I’ve struggled all summer to get control of myself. Then there are your visions.”

“Don’t go there.”

Mark swallowed hard, but continued. “I’m not going to preach at you. But I want to ask you to do one favor for me.”

“You can ask, but I’m not promising anything.”

“I won’t pretend to know how hard this has been for you. But I’ve been hiding stuff too. All summer I’ve been having a harder and harder time controlling my emotions. It’s like I get a heavy-duty hit of adrenaline over the least little thing.”

“Sounds like PMS,” Heather said, immediately regretting the snippy remark.

Mark nodded. “I probably deserved that. But if it’s PMS, then it’s the type that makes me want to break things, including people. The problem is, I could do it. Last week I almost hit Jennifer, and I don’t mean any friendly little love tap. I could have killed her.”

Seeing the dread in Mark’s face, Heather believed him. Dear Lord. What were they all becoming?

“But then I discovered something. You know how hard I’ve been practicing my meditation routines. The trouble is that meditation takes time. At least it used to.”

“What do you mean?” Mark now had Heather’s complete attention.

“I discovered that I can just recall how I felt during a certain meditation and it puts me there. Think about it. We all have these perfect memories. For us, remembering something is exactly like reliving it. Anyway, once I had the idea, I began mentally cataloguing a variety of meditation levels. I can drop into any one of them almost instantaneously.”

Before she could respond, Mark’s eyes lost their focus, his chest stilling to the point that she thought he had stopped breathing. But it was moving, just in a very slow rhythm.

Fascinated, Heather moved over to his chair and reached out to feel the pulse in his right wrist. A steady twenty-four beats per minute. Within seconds, it shifted to fifty-three beats per minute and his eyes returned to their normal alert expression.

“Wow!” was all she managed to say.

“And that brings me to my favor,” Mark said, his face as serious as Heather could remember seeing it. “I don’t think the ship is changing us into something inhuman. I think we were right from the beginning, that it’s just released all of our human potential. The problem is that we don’t have any idea what that means. Maybe a thousand years from now, or a million, every human will be using every part of the brain. But we’re just stumbling around trying to figure out what new thing is going to happen to us next.