Snap, Crackle ... Read online

  At that, she turned, looked at the roadway, and said, “You know what? You could be right. We saw signs of civilization, and I thought that would be it.”

  “But a compound like that,” he said, “would have had an awful lot of buildings. Just for security, for people who worked there—their staff and their victims if nothing else.”

  “I never even thought of that,” she said in amazement. “I always had it in my head as a single building.”

  “Well, let’s keep walking,” he said, and that’s what they did.

  *

  Hunter knew he couldn’t count on Beth’s memories, couldn’t count on anything coming out of her brain right now because she was too emotionally involved, and it had too much of a hold on her. “Did they do anything to your memory?”

  “Of course they did,” she said, “to my memories, to everything in my brain.”

  “Interesting,” he murmured.

  “No, not very interesting at all,” she said in a snappy voice.

  He caught himself holding back a grin. “I do appreciate your honesty,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t even know why we’re here,” she muttered.

  He ignored that because she knew very well, just her way to pull back from the whole scenario. As they kept walking, he looked around with interest. “Did they have gardens here, I wonder? Did they grow food, or did they bring it in?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I wondered if we had no food because we weren’t ever given much to eat.”

  “And I would have thought that was a punishment,” he said.

  “It definitely was,” she said, “but also times when there wasn’t a whole lot, I think. But what do I know?” she said. “Everything is twisted up in my head.”

  “And that’s to be expected,” he said firmly, “so don’t go getting upset because you can’t remember clearly.”

  “Of course that upsets me,” she said. “One of the things that they did was prey on my memories. They would lie to me, constantly telling me that I had family, then telling me that I didn’t. They would tell me that I had siblings and then tell me that I had none. At one point in time they told me that I had actual siblings held in the compound, and I was terrified, thinking that they were right. Just more lies.”

  “That doesn’t mean you didn’t have family though, correct?”

  She shrugged. “Who the hell knows what it meant?”

  He stopped up ahead and said, “Now this looks much more promising.”

  The building ahead looked old and dilapidated but still stood. And appeared to be made of concrete. She stepped up to his side and said in amazement, “I never saw it from the outside, but it doesn’t look quite so imposing as I had it in my head.”

  “It never is,” he said quietly. “You’ve got to remember that you were looking back with a child’s memory, and that has to be very different than the reality of what you were seeing before.”

  “All terrible,” she murmured. “It doesn’t matter what the reality was. Nothing was good about it.”

  “I want to get inside and take a look.” He led the way forward, barely stopping as they came to the actual entranceway. He pushed open the door, then he stepped inside. Holes were in the roof from years of disuse and decay. But partially standing, semisolid, and could, in fact, be fixed enough to be completely usable again, which was interesting since it was not being currently used. So, either they did have another place or they didn’t want to come back here for a different reason. He watched as she walked slowly forward.

  “While the decaying building might not have a whole lot of power over my memory, but just being here, even now, it feels pretty …” And she stopped.

  “Scary?”

  “Scary, disheartening, upsetting.” She shrugged. “All of the above. I don’t know. It just feels so … off. It’s lonely. It’s uncared for, but still, something is almost criminal about it.”

  “Criminal,” he said, looking at her. “That’s an interesting choice. Does something look criminal?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What’s that look for?”

  Hunter gave her a head tilt. “Deciphering the energy you’re picking up.”

  “I’m not sure it’s energy at all,” she said, “as much as it is feelings and emotions.”

  “And that’s good,” he said. “Keep picking those up because we need those too.”

  “Doesn’t mean there’s any validity to them,” she said. “Remember. You can’t trust anything that comes out of me. I’m broken.”

  He smiled. “You’ve been pretty-damn smart and right on so far,” he said, “so I don’t know how much in your head is broken after all.”

  She shrugged. “Well, I was broken for a long time,” she said. “I would think it would take much longer to heal.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” he said in a noncommittal voice. “Keep pulling in whatever emotions you feel here.”

  “Despair,” she said instantly. “Hurt, pain, loss, grief, frustration, anger.”

  He studied her and nodded. “Keep going,” he urged. “Keep going.”

  She raised both hands. “I’m not even sure what to keep going with,” she said. “Just so many emotions are here that it doesn’t end, just waves and waves of it. So many people hurt, and so many people lost.”

  He nodded. “Can you get a sense of the boss here?”

  “Well, something should be somewhere,” she said, looking around, “but I spent a lifetime tuned into his energy in order to avoid wherever he would be,” she said. “So the fact that I’m not even picking it up right now is odd.”

  “Maybe he’s not even alive anymore. Did you consider that?”

  “That would be wishful thinking,” she said, with a broken laugh.

  He looked around and said, “Let’s keep walking.” He walked through what was obviously a huge kitchen that looked institutional, like a big hospital kitchen, and nodded to himself. “Must have been a lot of people in here at one time, if they put this kitchen to good use,” he murmured.

  “Well, the headcount varied,” she said. “At times there were a lot of patients. A few times there were only about six or seven of us, but sometimes as many as thirty.”

  At thirty, he turned and looked at her, his eyebrows up.

  She nodded. “Remember? He was always hunting and looking for more of us.”

  “To find what though?”

  “To find the talented few,” she said, “since most of us didn’t make the grade.”

  “Including you?”

  She nodded. “I told you that I was the broken one.”

  “But you were broken because of them.”

  “I don’t think they cared about the distinction. I just wasn’t good enough to be one of them.”

  “Interesting,” he murmured.

  She shook her head. “Nothing interesting about it,” she said shortly. “It’s just all very sad.”

  He couldn’t say anything to that, so he continued looking at everything energy-wise. He felt multiple energies, but old painful energy. Energy that was still screaming or had the power to scream. That said a lot about just how much pain had existed here because normally the energy would wear down over time, but this wasn’t showing any signs of lessening. If anything, all that agony was all too interested in sticking around, as if it had a purpose, and it probably did. “The energy here is probably telling him something.”

  She stopped and looked at him.

  He nodded. “It’s almost like it’s telling somebody something.”

  “Yeah, us,” she said. “It’s telling us to get the hell out of here while we can.”

  “And that’s possible too,” he murmured, feeling some of what she felt through his own soul. Definitely something was wrong in this place. The history was here, easy to read in terms of energy readings, but also the pain, the fear, and the torture was evident. He shook his head.

  “I don’t think I ever blamed anybody for what they d
id in there,” she said. “How could I? Everybody was just doing their best to survive.”

  “Yet you continue to blame yourself.”

  “I do not,” she snapped back.

  He just gave her a small smile and turned away. “Every day you do it.”

  With that, she turned her back on him again.

  He liked that she was getting more and more of a backbone, fighting him, talking back. Something about this place brought out the victim, but, as long as he could keep her focused and keep her anger high, it would make her a little bit easier to work with.

  She said, “I don’t even know what this room was.”

  “I was thinking a commercial kitchen,” he said.

  She nodded. “Maybe. But I was never in here. Although something is a little familiar about that whole area by the washtubs.”

  “Did they—were you ever … waterboarded?”

  She nodded slowly. “Several times.”

  “Well, probably happened here then,” he said, holding back the anger choking him. To have done such a thing to anybody was bad enough, but to do it to a child was unbelievable, especially one who was helpless and incapable of fighting back. He shook his head. “Let’s keep looking around.”

  “Why? Isn’t it enough for you yet?”

  “We haven’t found anything yet,” he said. And he marched through the kitchens to the other rooms.

  Chapter 15

  Beth trailed behind Hunter, hating the sense of being watched, being followed. All those different energies were poking and prodding at her. “We’ll have company soon,” she announced.

  “I know. I feel them.”

  She raced to catch up. “What are you talking about? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “What would I say?” he said. “I felt them, and I know they’re coming.”

  “Why are we still here then?” she wailed.

  “Because we haven’t seen what we need to see.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll know it when I find it. At least I hope I will.”

  She groaned. “How stupid this is. How insane is it to not leave while we still can?”

  “I understand,” he said, with a nod. “But we also have the opportunity to get to the bottom of something, and that is important.”

  “It’s also deadly.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, “and that’s why we’re doing it. Remember?”

  She took a long deep breath. She raced from room to room, looking for anything worth seeing, past one room of desks, various old papers crumpled on the floor, with years of dust and dirt on top of them. But Hunter appeared not to care. “I don’t know what you’re looking for,” she cried out, after ten more minutes of searching.

  He shrugged. “And I don’t know either.” He stepped into another room, full of filing cabinets.

  “You know they’ll be empty,” she said.

  He nodded. “Of course they are.” But he went through the motions of opening them anyway. The bottom two drawers weren’t empty.

  She cried out and raced over. “Why would they leave this stuff?”

  “Either it’s not that important or they figured they’d come back later.”

  “So, you don’t think it’s an accident that they left it.”

  Hunter said, “If it were me, I’d make sure that we were out of here in one move.”

  “I heard many loud trucks before I was moved. I thought they were moving people, but they may have moved stuff first. Then the test subjects.”

  “Do you have any idea how many there were of you at the time of the move?”

  She nodded. “Only seven of us at the time.” But memories, distant and faint, crowded through her. “Yet I’m not sure on that number.”

  “So why were you in a separate vehicle?”

  “I think we all were transported individually, as I heard a commotion near my room that seems to account for that recollection. So one of us to a vehicle, I guess.”

  His eyebrows shot up at that. “Were you all considered so precious?”

  She snorted. “More like so dangerous.” He opened his mouth to say something, but she bent down to the bottom drawer, ignoring his reaction, as she rifled through the contents. “These are old files,” she said, lifting up one. “This was Mitzi. She wasn’t even here for very long,” she said, staring down at a photo of a woman she barely recognized.

  “But you did see her?”

  She nodded slowly. “I think she was staff, although I don’t know for sure.”

  “I guess you didn’t have anybody clueing you in, did you?”

  “Lizzy and I were pretty good about getting information out of the guards,” she said, “but that was before we were separated.”

  “You two were friends?”

  She nodded. “We were good friends. We had big dreams about leaving this place and renting an apartment together.”

  “And how did you know about things, like renting apartments?”

  “We learned everything from the guards,” she said. “And we were allowed some movies, which gave us a good idea of how the rest of the world worked. But, no, we didn’t know enough to survive out there. I was a babe in the woods when I finally got free.”

  “You don’t know that Lizzy ever got free, do you?”

  She shook her head. “I hope so. I mean, otherwise it’s just too much to think about.”

  “And yet you know for sure that she didn’t?”

  “Well, I sense and feel her energy, but I don’t know if it’s her reaching for me or if she’s hunting me.”

  “Stop,” he said. “I get that you want to believe that she made it, but you know that she’s still working for them.”

  “Yes,” she said, “definitely. But I keep hoping that inside is the Lizzy I used to know.”

  He winced at that.

  She said, “I know. Naive, right?” She reached for another folder. “These are all people I met who worked here temporarily,” she said, “but I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know why these files would be here.”

  “Because they’re not current obviously.” He joined her and pulled out a few more, but most of them were covered in dirt and dust. He picked them up and laid them out along the top of the filing cabinets, then brought out his phone and took photos of the top page with the name, the information, and the photo, then sent them off to Stefan.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “Maybe we can track down these people and see if they have something to say about it. These are actual connections to whatever the hell you went through,” he said. “That makes them very valuable.”

  He looked around, spied an old bag sitting on the floor and collected all the files, putting them inside. Although initially it looked like a lot, by the time they were in the bag and stacked up, not that much. He looped his arm through the straps on the bag and motioned her forward. Just as he stepped past, he caught note of something and returned to the filing cabinet.

  She followed and asked, “What’s up?”

  He pulled the filing cabinet away from the wall, and something fell. Another folder was back there. He pulled it out, opened it up for a look, then sucked in his breath. He held up the picture. “You know who that is?”

  She stared at a picture of her four-year-old self. “Oh my God,” she said, “that’s my file.”

  “It is,” he said, “but what’s it doing here?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She reached for it, but he said, “Come on. We don’t have time.” He shoved it inside the bag with the others and said, “We’ll look at it later.”

  She stared at him in shock. “I don’t want to lose that. It will have my family data. It’ll have everything.”

  He hesitated, then brought it out and took pictures of the file. “We’re taking precious time, when they are bearing down upon us now,” he warned.

  “I know, but it’s everything to me,” she said, feeling the impendi
ng sense of doom.

  He flipped to the last page, taking several more pictures of the last few photos, charts, and notes there; then he shoved the file into his bag and said, “Let’s finish our search, while we can.”

  “What if they closed the electrical shield?” she asked, looking around.

  “That just confirms they’re on their way. It doesn’t mean we’ll be here though,” he said. He grabbed her hand and said, “Come on.”

  *

  The stuff Hunter had glanced at in her file terrorized him, and he didn’t want to discuss it or to read through any details of that material. Just too damaging to be believed. But it did help to understand the terror she experienced right now. He immediately sent out energy, calming her down and soothing her system. He sent out a call to Stefan to help too. We’re being hunted, he said.

  Stefan murmured in his ear, I can feel it, but they’re a long way away yet.

  Presumably because we broke that barrier.

  I don’t know how advanced any of these people are or how they got that way, he said. You can’t just take any old somebody off the street.

  I need to keep going, to find more.

  Or be satisfied with what you have, Stefan said. We can come back later.

  We have a body here. We have to open an investigation, and I have files, Hunter said. I want to make sure they don’t get them. Although I sent you some photos, I also found her file.

  Hers? Stefan asked. Normally they wouldn’t have left hers behind.

  It was behind the filing cabinet, as if somebody had put it up on top, and it dropped down the back somewhere along the line.

  Interesting, Stefan murmured. Well, she needs that. It might help her to heal.

  I’m hoping so, he said. She’s a long way away from it right now.

  Of course, Stefan murmured. Nothing like trauma to keep one constantly running and exposed.

  And, in this case, terrified, Hunter murmured. He raced through the building, looking at room after room after room. Everything else is empty. I’m going out the back.

  Go, Stefan said. Vehicles are on their way.

  I get it, he said. I wish we could come up with something that would give them an alternate reason for why the energy popped.