Shadow Game (GhostWalkers, #1)(25)

" 'I thought I'd gone wrong by choosing such young subjects. In the beginning it made sense because their brains weren't developed; I could use that, teach them to use the parts that were just dormant, waiting for someone to awaken them. But children were too young. I determined that if I chose men with superior training and discipline, I wouldn't run into the same problems. I could depend on them to do all their practices, build shields, erect the necessary barriers when they needed respite. You were able to do it, so a fully grown man would be stronger, a military man more apt to obey and make use of all the training.' "

Lily sighed softly and turned the page. " 'Everything has gone wrong again. You'll see the problems in the disks and the reports. There is no way to reverse this process, Lily. I've tried to figure a way, but once it's done, it can't be undone and these men, the women, and you all have to live with what I've done. I have no answers for Ryland Miller. I can hardly look him in the eye anymore. I think Colonel Higgens and someone at Donovans is conspiring to get the reports and sell the information to other countries. I've been followed, and my offices at home and at work have been broken into. I believe Miller and his team are in danger. You must get a message to General Ranier (he is Colonel Higgens's direct superior) and let him know what's going on. I can't get through to him. You know him well and I can't imagine him not responding to you. I've left him countless messages to call me or to come to Donovans but I've heard nothing back.' "

Lily stared at the familiar symbols, aching to hear her father's voice. She could be hurt and she could be angry, but she couldn't change anything that he had done. " 'I've set up bank accounts for Miller's team just in case. If I fail, you'll have to help them all for me. You'll have to tell them the truth. Without someone like you, with your talent to draw sound and emotion away from them, they will need to work continually to find private quiet places or they will eventually overload. Watch the tapes, read the reports, and then you must find a way to lessen the damage and teach these men and the others to live as you have lived. In a protected environment, useful to society, but living. Please think of me with all the love and compassion I know you have in your heart. I'm afraid, Lily, afraid for both of us and afraid for all of those men.' "

Lily sat for a long time with her head bowed and her shoulders shaking. Tears burned but didn't fall. She had been so unprepared for this, yet somehow she wasn't as shocked as she should have been. She knew her father, knew his belief that the laws were too stringent and only hindered medical and defense research. His name was revered in so many circles. His name had always been above reproach, yet he had conducted secret experiments on children. It was unforgivable.

Lily pushed herself up from the desk and made her way to the videos. She looked at the shelves of tape. Her life. Right there. All numbered neatly in her father's hand. It wasn't going to be of her first steps, as many parents recorded, or graduating with honors from a university, it was going to be a cold-blooded documentary of a psychic adept whose abilities were enhanced in some way by a man who claimed to love her.

She didn't think she could bear to sit through it. She couldn't even run to her father for reassurance. He was at the bottom of the cold sea. Murdered. A chill went through her. Peter Whitney had most likely been murdered in an attempt to gain the very information she possessed. Someone wanted to know how he had enhanced a psychic adept's abilities. Her father hadn't shared his actual process with anyone, not at Donovans Corporation and not with Colonel Higgens or the general above him.

Lily pulled the first video off the shelf with shaking fingers. Ryland Miller and his entire team were alive because her father hadn't provided the information. Why would they kill the only man who could give it to them? If they couldn't get the information one way, they would certainly go at it from another angle.

An accident would provide a dead subject, one they could dissect. One they could take apart and study in the hopes that they would gain the secret. They would have such power if they utilized the talents her father's work had unleashed. Had Morrison's death really been unintentional? Had he suffered the seizures from what Whitney had done to him or had someone given him a drug to cause seizures so they could study him?

Knowing she had a great deal of information to go through in a very short time, Lily inserted the videotape in the player and began to watch.



LILY felt absolutely numb as she watched the little girl with enormous eyes "play" games for hours. Her father's voice was without inflection as he gave data and recited her growing abilities. She tried desperately to detach herself from emotion the way her father was so obviously able to do as he watched and filmed the little girl vomiting repeatedly from the migraines. Light hurt her eyes, sound hurt her ears, she cried and rocked and pleaded, and, through it all, Peter Whitney filmed and documented and spoke in his impersonal monotone.

Lily stared at the video, sickened that the man she called her father, the man she loved as her father could do such things to a child. He stood there filming all the while the nurse worked to comfort and help her. He even ordered the nurse aside as he went in for close-ups as Lily pressed her hands to her ears. Several times when she had disconnected, withdrawing from the world, into herself, rocking back and forth, he had become annoyed and had instructed the nurse to isolate her from the others so she wouldn't "infect them with her methods of retreat."