Shadow Game (GhostWalkers, #1)(56)

"A few hours ago, after the day help went home," Arly admitted. "That's where we're most vulnerable. We need the staff, but they aren't necessarily loyal to the estate. It won't matter how much we pay them, if they're offered more, they'll give out information and maybe even go so far as to snoop in the areas off limits or drop little listening devices."

"I've set up a command post on the third floor," Ryland said. "We mapped out several escape routes, going up to the roof and down to the tunnels. Thanks for the motion detectors, Arly. Those certainly make the men feel more secure."

"You can't leave the parameters I gave you," Arly cautioned. "We can't guarantee safety if you do. Lily tells me she's going to work with you and the others to prepare all of you for the outside environment and hopefully minimize the risks of complications. In the meantime, you'll have to realize the day staff is our greatest security risk."

Lily stepped back to allow the two men to precede her into the office. She wanted to ensure the door was locked. Arly had changed the security code on the off chance another intruder might get into the house.

"I'm going to monitor the house from my rooms," Arly announced. "Will you be all right?" He pointedly ignored Ryland to ask the question of Lily.

"I think Captain Miller knows all sorts of hand-to-hand things," she quipped.

"That's what I'm afraid of," Arly said. In a rare show of affection he leaned down to kiss her cheek. "You aren't wearing your watch. And you're looking tired. Maybe you ought to sleep for a few hours before getting involved in your research, Lily."

"This can't wait, Arly, but thank you for worrying. I'll go to bed as soon as I can and I'll sleep all day."

"And wear your watch."

Lily hugged his thin body close to her. "Don't worry about me, Arly."

Ryland watched the older man go. "He's a tough guy when it comes to you. He gave me the second degree. I had the feeling he might turn me in himself if he thought I was up to no good." He watched with interest as Lily went to the grandfather clock and did something he couldn't see with the hour hand. To his astonishment the front of the clock moved forward to reveal a hidden chamber in the wall. Then he found himself staring at an opening in the floor.

"Does the house have many of these rooms?" He followed her down the steep, narrow staircase. His shoulders brushed the walls on either side.

"Well, if you mean are there passageways, yes, and hidden rooms, but there is no evidence of this stairway. It's sandwiched between two of the basements' walls. It leads beneath the basements underground and I don't believe it was in the blueprints, so my father's laboratory is very secret. He has up-to-date equipment in it along with an entire library of documentation on his earlier experiment as well as with you and your men."

"Explain to me about the electricity pulses, Lily. I need to understand what Jeff is up against." Ryland stared around the laboratory, amazed at the meticulous detailing of Peter Whitney's private lab. He shouldn't have been. Research was Whitney's life and he had the money to indulge his needs, but the equipment could only have been found in the best research centers.

"The entire idea of brain bleeds as a side effect bothers me," Lily said as she began to scan dates on the neat collection of disks. "Everyone seems to accept it as normal but it isn't. It would be incredibly rare. Seizures would have to be massive and continuous to cause the bleeds. And what's bringing the seizures on? Prolonged exposure to highly emotional waves of energy? Using telepathy without an anchor, or a safeguard? That could happen, the brain is overtaxed, too much garbage getting in, but it would more likely produce severe migraines. I've been functioning for years overstimulated by emotions and unwanted information. Yes, I get migraines and it's very draining but I don't seize and I don't have brain bleeds."

"I still don't know what that means. We've lost two men to brain hemorrhages; at least that's what we were told happened to them."

Lily inserted a disk into the computer. "My father tried using small pulses of electricity to stimulate brain activity in his initial experiments. He surgically planted electrodes directly on the areas he wanted enhanced. The microelectrodes recorded action generated by individual neurons. The electrical signals were amplified, filtered, and could be displayed visually and even converted to sounds through an audiometer."

"He was watching the brain waves react?" Ryland watched the data flashing over the screen at a rate he couldn't follow but even while talking, Lily seemed to be computing it. He watched the expressions chasing across her face, interest, a frown, a slight pause as she shook her head, then more data.

"And listening to them. Neurons have characteristic patterns of activity which can be both visualized and heard." She murmured the information absently, peering more closely at the screen.

"Damn it, Lily! Are you telling me we have something planted in our brains along with everything else done to us? No one agreed to that." He rubbed his throbbing temples, fury swirling in his gut.

"Jeff Hollister has evidence of surgery. But I can't imagine Dad repeating such a terrible mistake—one of the rare side effects he found long ago was brain bleeds and he determined it wasn't worth the results."