Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(95)
“I’m sorry.”
“You know what? I can’t talk to you right now. Just give me some space.”
Mark stepped back, her words slapping him in the face as effectively as if she had used her open hand. For a second he stood there, his deep brown eyes shining with moisture. Then he turned and strode from her room, leaving Heather alone.
The void that settled into the room with his departure put a lump in her throat. Heather was angry with Mark, but now that she thought about it, the speed-reading revelation had only been one more brick on the pile of frustration that weighed her down. Since she had come to terms with her latest savant gift, she had been working her ass off trying to master it, but that goal drifted beyond her reach, as elusive as the end of the rainbow. Not that she hadn’t made huge strides in understanding how it worked.
Chess. Heather could play entire games in her mind. She could beat any computer chess opponent with ease, and she suspected the legendary Deep Blue computer opponent would present no more of a challenge than any of the others. How could it when her mind could run through an endless number of game variations with a thought? But compared to the complexity the real world presented, chess might as well have been tic-tac-toe.
Her brain gathered every bit of data available to it, including some subtle details well below the level of her conscious thought, constructing most-likely scenarios and doling them out as visions so vivid that she often found it difficult to remember that she needed to come back to reality. Thank God Mark had taught her the meditation trick that kept her in the present until she made a conscious choice to let the hallucinations take her.
Heather had made a number of important discoveries. First, she could control the subject of the visions, at least partially, by concentrating on a particular thing as she let herself go. And the answers she got from her waking dreams were incredibly accurate in the short term.
But the longer-term probabilities got weaker and weaker, their likelihood depending on the quality and quantity of her present information. Just as in chess, the possible outcomes shifted based on what the other players might do, their possible actions opening up whole new universes of nonlinear fractal mathematics. But in chess, humans and computers played the game completely differently. A human master could sense the correct move without consciously having to play out all possibilities the way a computer would. Heather had acquired an enhanced combination of both abilities, her mind picking only the most worthy choices to be played out in each step.
Every attempt to go further into the future left Heather so exhausted she could barely summon the energy to bring herself back. Despite the terror of the thought that she might lose herself in a land of permanent hallucination, Heather drove herself deeper. And with each attempt, each venture further out onto that ledge, she could feel herself grow stronger.
Heather glanced down at the digital photograph Mark had taken of her during one of her visions. There she stood in her own kitchen, silhouetted against the stainless steel backdrop of the GE refrigerator. Something about her expression made it appear that she was staring straight ahead, despite her wide-open eyes having rolled so far up in her head that only the whites were visible. Not a particularly good look on her. No wonder she’d scared her mom and dad to death. Christ. Staring into those white eyes was enough to make you want to crawl under the bed.
But that fear was nothing compared to the force that drove her to the limits of her enhanced endurance. No matter how many scenarios she examined, the waking dreams had left her convinced of one thing. If they didn’t find Jennifer, horrors beyond anything she had ever imagined would sweep them all away.
Heather had seen her mom and dad die horribly so many times that she couldn’t bear to think about it. Mark died. Jennifer died. But each time Heather was left behind, wanting to die but unable to do so. Depending on what she and Mark did in her visions, the hallucinations changed, but in every one where they failed to go after Jennifer she lived out the stuff of nightmare. Although Heather couldn’t see the face of her enemy, she knew with a cold certainty that something was coming for them, and if she and Mark didn’t leave soon, it would kill everyone she loved, before turning its attention toward her.
Heather glanced down at the speed-reading course materials Mark had left on her bed. As angry as she had been at him for keeping the information from her, she could have kissed him for finally bringing it to her. There was so much she needed to know, but this had to come first.
Piling pillows high against her headboard and sliding back against them, Heather grabbed the books and began scanning them into her memory. Whatever it took, she wasn’t going to leave this room until she had mastered the contents. As she leafed through the materials, a chill of anticipation worked its magic on her attitude. No matter how badly life seemed to have stacked the odds against her, she was not without talents, and this new skill would only make her stronger.
And with Mark, she was not alone. For the first time, she felt that new strength bubbling up within her, pushing back the darkness that lurked at the edges of her soul.
“Hang in there, Jen. We love you. Wherever you are, we’re coming.”
97
Mark swallowed hard, steadying his hand under the microscope for the last circuit board connection. This one had to be perfect. The last time he had done this there had been no pressure, just the joy of being able to impress Heather and Jennifer with his complete mastery of every nerve ending and muscle in his body. And they had been duly impressed with the results of his modifications to the miniaturized subspace transmitter.