"Caleb... what's wrong?" Randi asked.
I looked at the couple, as opposite as two people could be. "Parker said we've got to go back to the dome-world."
Randi's face was pinched, distressed. "Why?"
I gave a narrow look at Parker. "It's that or you guys all go slowly crazy." Like dominoes falling, I thought, but didn't say.
"Huh?" Tiff said, gumless for once.
"We've been given some kind of... drug. Slow-release is my guess," John said, swiveling his face to look at Parker who nodded.
"An enhancer?" I asked, straightening as Clyde released me.
Parker nodded. "It is a clever application. This drug uses your hidden insecurities and underlying concerns and magnifies them. Toward the end of the drug's lifespan, it can cause suicidal actions in most."
Jade, my mind shrieked.
My parents.
My brain cleared, allowing visuals of their smiling faces, my heart squeezing inside of me, my stomach becoming a burning lump.
"Why would they try to make us all go nuts?" Sophie asked a little breathlessly.
Parker gave a tight smile. "Control."
"Asswipes," Tiff muttered and Archer smiled.
"That doesn't explain why we have to do the world-warp thing again," Mia said logically as Bry walked up to stand beside her.
She took his hand in hers and his eyes widened.
I saw it all from out-of-body, like I was floating and untethered to my reality.
I turned to Bobbi Gale, her body pressed against Clyde, those dark eyes of hers never leaving me, having never left me.
"They know about the kinship now, Caleb. It makes everything worse. When they found out through DNA testing, your relation to Parker... to Clyde, they flipped. Then the Precog identified your possible future...." Gale said, obviously having received the lowdown from Parker.
"What?" John asked, frowning.
Parker sighed and his zombies shifted, their smell wafting in the air. I saw Mia cover her nose. Parker and I were unfazed.
The dead didn't smell any longer. They just were.
"It is the parallel reality. You understand that precept?" Parker nailed Terran with steady eyes.
Terran gave a terse nod. "Of course."
Of course he would, he was John. John of the mondo brain.
"I began to suspect that Caleb and I were blood relations back that first time. When the government entity I work for wished to acquire you. Study you." His eyes met mine, then he cast them down, when they rose I saw the shame that infused them, devoid of other emotion. "They've had me since those first trials. They paid my mother some hush money and that was that. I didn't get the placebo..."
"They took you before you were emancipated?" Archer asked.
Parker rolled his eyes. "You should all understand by now who we're dealing with? They are without scruples. If it advances their goals, nothing will be an obstacle."
"How are we related?" I asked, curious despite the circumstances.
"Family tree revelation later, Hart," Jonesy said when I was on the verge of answers.
I scowled and he pointed to the livid mark on his forearm, perfectly outlined in an eight-pointed star. "I'd like to be crazy on purpose, bro. Instead of, like... against my will if you feel me."
Jonesy logic.
His brows rose to his nappy hairline, the tight black cap of hair framing an expressive face. An expectant face.
"It'd getcha outta babysitting, Jones," Tiff said, smacking gum that had miraculously appeared in her mouth.
Jones frowned at her. "Micah stinks like crap all the time but she's okay."
Tiff barked out a laugh.
Jonesy's scowl deepened. "I'm not going soft, Tiff."
"Uh-huh," she said, blowing a screaming pink bubble.
"Okay," Parker held up a hand to stop the bantering, wearing an expression of disbelief.
I could see where Parker would have some of that but my friends were pretty well inured to events that ranked on the Weird Shit 'o Meter at this point. On a scale from one to ten, this was like... maybe an eight.
But there was time, oh yes there was.
Randi, Ms. Inter-dimensional Travel Queen asked the right question, "Right... so, why do we have to go back to the dome-world?"
"Sphere," John corrected absently.
"Whatever, John!" Tiff said, snapping her gum.
"Because, the Zondorae brothers have the antidote to the enhancer. They alone can save your friends. Everyone."
"Wait a sec," I held up a finger. "Why didn't they just nail me with the drug. I'd go batshit and everyone would be happy. I'd do myself in and they'd blame it on my," I thought about it for a moment, "inability to cope with my AFTD."
Jonesy barked out a laugh at my wording.
"You're unprecedented AFTD," Archer added, giving Jonesy a look to get serious.
Like that'd happen.
I nodded to him. Yes, it was that. Whether I liked that distinction or not, it was what it was.
"Because it would be investigated. This was always smoke and mirrors, Caleb. All your friends would go insane, slowly, in different ways depending on their individual weaknesses and insecurities. In this way, it could be blamed on their abilities, not you. It really was a flawless plan."
We looked at Bry, the only mundane.
He ripped his sleeves up to reveal unmarred skin.
"I'll be damned," Garcia said, arriving just then and getting a clear look at the smooth muscled forearms that Weller had shown us.
"Not a good position to be in, Dear Sir," Clyde said with gravity, his light hazel eyes holding the wisdom of ages in them, all of it leveled like a laser beam at Garcia.
Garcia's eyes flicked to his and he swallowed. "You're right."
Clyde nodded in acknowledgment, his studious eyes taking in Garcia's position, noting that he kept a wide berth around the pair.
Garcia's worse possible move would be to come within a meter of Bobbi Gale. Clyde would not take well to that.
At all.
Even now I could feel his intent swell, contained.
For the moment.
"This won't work, Parker," Bry said, his tone said, obviously. "We chucked all their nasty shit in the bonfire in that world. The Guys with Gills made sure it got burnt."
He shrugged and a voice from behind us startled the group, Clyde was the only one that didn't jump at the sound of it.
Gramps said, "A follow-through set of gents, those?"
I turned to look at him, grinning. "Yeah, Gramps, they got crap done."
He put his hands on his hips, legs spread wide. "Well good, nice to know someone does." He smiled back at me and winked.
His eyes shifted from me to Garcia... then finally landed on Parker. "So we're somehow related?"
Parker nodded and Gramps palmed his chin. "You're not going to take my grandson and do the guinea pig pin test on him?"
Wasn't that voodoo? Whatever, it didn't sound like a fun time.
Parker smiled and shook his head.
Gramps looked at Parker, staring for a long time. Finally, he grunted and nodded his head. "Mr. Weller thinks they don't have anymore of their special juice to neutralize their crazy cocktail, my friend," he spread his arms wide, the long sleeved shirt he wore, covering one corner of the mark on his arm.
The rest blazed at me from where I stood. Livid and red.
Lethal.
Gramps and I had a swollen pause together, I was putting together what his end was if I didn't get this antidote. He was understanding the pressure I was under.
Something occurred to me. "Wait, how'd they get to everyone," my eyes flicked to Gramps again, "to Gramps."
Gramps suddenly grinned, the corner of his eyes crinkling in unfettered joy.
Oh shit.
"Well, they came, and some pieces were left behind."
He winked and I swayed where I stood, feeling my gorge rise in a tight, hot lump.
Everyone started talking at once as I sucked in great wheezing gulps of air that smelled like garbage and a little like death.
I was down with death, it straightened my spine and allowed me to think again, killing the fuzziness that had encroached at the edges of my brain.
Past the visual of Graysheet body parts that littered Gramps' yard as they'd tried to traverse his pulse-activated minefield.
The dumbasses.
But some had gotten through. I told him that, my eyes searching his.
He nodded. "Yes, they got through. Some," he paused, "but not all," he finished significantly.
Parker looked at Gramps then finally gave me his full attention. "They used a Manipulative."
Randi covered her mouth, her arm, like the rest, sporting the new mark. "I've heard of them. They're making a counter-serum to neutralize the ability."
"Pandora's box," Archer said.
"Huh?" Jonesy asked.
"It's that old story about a bunch of people that wanted to find treasure so bad that they opened a forbidden box and got a nasty surprise," Alex said.
"So, our paranormal ability context keeps expanding and now abilities are cropping up that nobody knows what to do with?" John said rhetorically.
Parker nodded but said, "Oh... they know what to do with it. With enough money, they can do anything."
Sophie's lip trembled. "They had a Manipulative in my house? They made me sit there while they stabbed me with their crap?" she nearly wailed and Jonesy went over and stood next to her.
Girl Meltdown Imminent.
"Asswipes," Tiff repeated for good measure and Clyde frowned at her. She looked at my life-like zombie and shrugged.
Unflappable.
"They did. It is extremely effective. However, there are some that are immune to a Manipulative."
"Who?" I asked.
"A Null," Parker said and we all looked at John.
He slapped his forehead. "I know when they did it."
Parker nodded. "They gave you a suppressant, and then, while you lay snoozing," he mimed depressing a syringe.
"Gawd that's lame," Jonesy said, rubbing the raised welt on his arm.
"The lamest," Tiff agreed.
"How do we nail these bastards?" Alex said in a growl.
Parker shook his head. "You mean, how do you save yourselves?"
And Jade, my mind whispered.
I instantly wondered where she was, what she was thinking under the thrall of the slow-moving and insidious chemical that was even now, unraveling her psyche.
"Wait!" I said, panicked. Parker turned and I asked, "Does this work on everyone the same? How much time do we have?"
Parker shook his head. "No, it's an individual time line. Each person's biological response depends on a lot of factors."
"Like what?" John asked, his mental wheels spinning.
Parker shrugged. "Mental stability, upbringing... emotional fortitude."
"So... people that have a stronger... disposition," I hesitated over the next part, "will, what? Succumb more slowly?"
"That's not a perfect explanation but it's damn close," Parker said.
"The fragile will spiral quickly?" John clarified with a question.
Parker nodded. "People that have been abused, suffered emotionally... they will be very vulnerable to the progression."
Gramps spun his face to mine. "I know about Jade, Caleb."
My girl. She was the most fragile of us all.
And she was with Brett. By my hand.
Gramps strode to me and clamped strong hands on my shoulders, I looked down at him, almost to my adult height. "No son, don't go bonkers now. She needs you."
Parker interrupted, "Jade won't know that though. She'll feel like she naturally feels whatever way she feels. The ideas she has, thought processes, they will evolve naturally as if they were her own. She will respond, think and react irrationally. It will all be based on small insecurities or worries. Not logic. That's been wiped."
I clenched my teeth together. "I need to get to her."
Tiff said, "What, you gonna kidnap her champ?" she asked, not unkindly.
I closed my eyes. What could I do?
"I can get her here," Sophie said hesitantly. We all looked at her.
"No, Soph. It's not safe," Jonesy said. He was thinking like a guy. A protector. He'd already put the loose pieces of Howie Frazier together with Brett Mason like dual cherries on top of the misery cake.
Nice.
Parker cleared his throat and Logan Tracker literally came out of the woodwork, sliding from between two piles of trash, full of decaying lumber from a demolition.
"Holy effing smokes!" Jonesy yelled. "Could this get any goddamned worse?"
