Fourth Birth: The Oakmont Saga, Book 1

The bus ride was almost like a dream, a good one for a change. We were able to relax and not worry about the outside world for a little while, although we both knew it’d come crashing back as soon as we stopped, if not sooner. I half expected them to pull the bus over and pull us off, but maybe my ruse had actually worked.

We’d find out soon enough. No sense worrying about it before we needed to. I had enough other issues to worry about, such as my almost constant shaking, sweating and periodic crying for no reason. Then there was the overwhelming need for the drugs. It was constantly nagging at me, and it was getting stronger and stronger, and not just one part of it, but the entire mixture. I needed it and I needed it soon or I was going to come apart.

Then there were the dreams, which hadn’t let up at all. I still dreamed about the things the doctors did to me and would do to me if they got me back. What was worse was that I’d let them, if I knew I could get the drugs to make me feel good again.

There was also the dreams about James. He was part of the nightmares I endured while they had me, and those dreams had never really stopped. They were just added to by the doctors.

“Are you okay?” Aliyah asked, apparently sensing my internal conflict.

“Not really, but I will be.”

“Is it the drugs or the dreams?” she asked, cutting straight to the heart of the problem. It was amazing how she was able to sense my troubles and what they were.

“Both,” I replied, tears beginning to cloud my vision again.

Aliyah wrapped her arms around me and I sobbed onto her shoulder for what seemed like forever. At some point, I must’ve drift off, because the dreams took on a whole different reality, which couldn’t have been real. They were so much worse than the ones I had when I was awake.

I bolted out of my sleep, curled up. I sat shaking in my seat. Aliyah was asleep, thankfully. At least she didn’t see me like that. Not that time, anyway, although I knew she had and probably would again. I didn’t deserve a friend like her and she didn’t deserve a friend as messed up as me, who was going to betray her. She deserved so much more...better...than me.

The tears started flowing again, as those thoughts entered my mind. I knew it was right and I knew I needed to leave her, but I had to make sure she was safe first. I couldn’t leave her to be sent back there and experimented on by those people, and I couldn’t let her get hooked on those drugs, like I was.

“God, please help me,” I begged, barely whispering the words, tears flowing down my cheeks. I was coming apart and I knew it. I couldn’t last much longer, at least not without the drugs. Even with them, I’d eventually lose who I was. Maybe, I already had.

I didn’t know how long I was like that, but I returned to reality as the bus lurched to a stop. I never even felt the turns we must have taken, but we were pulling into what must’ve been the bus depot. Before we even stopped, I saw a black SUV in the parking lot and even though anyone could own a black SUV, I got suspicious.

Nudging Aliyah awake, I pointed to the SUV, which was parked very close to where the bus was stopping. “It’s them,” she whispered to me, proving my suspicion true. I wasn’t sure how she knew so easily, but I trusted her. I’d learned to believe it when she sounded that sure about people.

“Back at the school, I used telepathy to convince a couple of people that I didn’t have anything in my hands once, even though I did. Do you think we could do that with them?” I asked her.

“Show me,” she gently commanded and so I did, sending the images and feelings of what I did, including the feeling that something was trying to block me.

“They have something that blocks us from entering their minds?” she asked, picking up on that thought.

“Yeah. The doctors told me they did. I’m not sure why they told me. Maybe they were so sure I couldn’t escape, they weren’t worried about me knowing.”

“That was a mistake.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We’re not free yet.”

“No, but they don’t have us yet either,” she said, her right eyebrow lifting as if waiting for me to challenge that. I didn’t have an argument though, so I kept quiet.

“What are we going to do?” I asked her, knowing I sounded desperate.

“Let’s try what you said, but not try and avoid them seeing us. Let’s just change what we look like in their minds. That might be easier and I think we can do it,” she suggested.

“Okay, but how?”

“There are four of them standing in a line. You take the two to the right and I take the other two. Put images in their minds of us looking very different than we do right now, maybe older and with slightly different color hair.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

As we left the bus, I sent an image to my two of two older girls, carrying hand bags and nothing else. Although our coloring was the same, we were taller and a little more developed, as women would be. I left most of our features alone, as I was not able to come up with anything that complex right then. I did lighten Aliyah’s hair and darken mine, in the images I pushed. I also made both of our hair much curlier and shorter.

Although my nerves were going crazy, we made it past them with no problem. They looked at us as we passed, but didn’t do anything else. I felt like I was about to pee myself, as tense as I was.

As we walked past, Aliyah nudged me and I saw the sign for the Alaska Marine Highway System. It was the ferry I was looking for. We walked straight to the building, which was a couple hundred feet away, all in the open.

When we went in, we walked to the ticket counter and Aliyah took the lead. “Can we have two tickets for the ferry to Anchorage?”

“There’s no ferry to Anchorage. The closest we can get you is Whittier, which is about 60 miles from Anchorage, and you’re in luck. The Kennicott is leaving today, if you’re wanting to travel that soon. Otherwise, the next ferry doesn’t leave until January 7th. Can you arrange transportation from Whittier to Anchorage?” Aliyah shook her head no. “You could catch the train, but I don’t know how much it is or if you have enough money,” she said, and Aliyah’s face lit up.

“We’ll go to Whittier and take the ferry leaving today,” she said, before the woman could offer anything else.

“Alright then. Are your parents here, so we can verify that you’re authorized to travel?” she asked.

“No, ma’am, but they’ve approved our travel,” she said, and I could see her send a probe into the woman’s mind.

“Alright then. Since you have their authorization to travel, your tickets come to $1144.”

“Mel, do you have that much?” I reached into my pack and counted out the money, which I definitely had. This would cut deep into it, though. I hoped the train wasn’t too expensive and we didn’t need too much after getting there. I still wasn’t sure what we were going to do once we got there.

“The ferry’s already loading, but you still have time to get a bite to eat, if you want,” the woman told us.

“Thank you,” Aliyah said, smiling at her.

“I hope you girls have a nice trip and a wonderful time visiting your grandparents.”

“Thank you. I’m sure we will,” Aliyah replied, her smile getting a little bigger and she looked down in a shy manner, as she replied.

After eating some less than great food, we got on the ferry and I paid a little more to get a private cabin, rather than us sleeping in an open room with everyone else. The cabin cost another $136, but it was well worth it. We still had to use a public shower room, although there were individual stalls.

The next five days on the ferry were a living hell for me. I sat that first day, completely in a fog. However, I started having waking dreams, more real than they ever had been before, so I stayed in the cabin more and more. Aliyah started bringing me food at some point, since I wouldn’t leave the cabin after the second day, other than to go to the bathroom. Of course, I barely ate what she brought, but she kept bringing it.

On the fourth day or maybe only the end of the third day, we left the inner passage and hit the open ocean, where there was obviously a storm somewhere. The waves were immense and the ship was like a tiny cork on them. I’d never experienced seasickness before, so this was totally new and really bad. At that point, I stopped making any pretense of eating. I couldn’t keep it down even if I wanted to.

My mind might have been making it worse than it really was, since I was losing my sanity. The dreams were almost real. Aliyah had to stop me from lashing out with my mind more than once. I still wasn’t sure how she knew when I was about to, or for that matter how she even did it, but she did and it had been a miracle for me.

The blackness that surrounded my mind was getting worse and the need for the drugs was getting worse even faster. Also after the second day at sea, I was constantly shaking and always sweaty and always crying. It never stopped anymore. My thoughts were completely scattered, making no sense and jumping from one thing to another, without rhyme or reason. I was beginning to have tremendous headaches, which only went away when I managed to drag myself to the shower and sit under completely cold water.

Of course, the water was almost ice cold, which meant I left the shower shivering and a little blue, besides the grayness from being sick. I was sure I was a beautiful sight. I’d quit brushing my hair again, like I had during the worst of my time after the attack by James and although I recognized it, I didn’t care.

Looking in the mirror after one of my cold showers, I saw that I was looking more and more like a skeleton. My eyes were sunk into my head and my cheeks were very pale, almost grey. There were large dark areas around my eyes, which made them look even worse. Seeing my reflection in the mirror, I looked just like the pictures of the druggies I’d seen during the drug education at my old school. I didn’t look at the mirror again.

What was really bad, and I knew it, I’d have been perfectly fine with that if I could have gotten more of the drugs. If only I could experience that again, that feeling of goodness that I felt when they were giving it to me. With that thought, I dove back into the blackness that was my world.

“We still have no idea where they went?” Stone asked his lieutenant.

The man looked very uncomfortable. “No, sir,” he replied.

“John, don’t worry so much. This isn’t your fault. If you did something that contributed to our losing the girls, I would call you out on it so it doesn’t happen again, but you had nothing to do with this,” he told the man. John still looked shaken by what happened.

“Sir, we could’ve had them, but they walked right past us,” he stated.

“They’re very powerful telepaths, and they altered what you saw,” Stone told him.

“That’s what scares me,” he admitted.

“Rebecca, I thought that the mind blocks stopped that type of thing,” he said.

“It has in every telepath ever tested, until now. As I already explained, Melanie’s brain is very different than any telepath we’ve ever had. Aliyah is now just as different, thanks to her taking the X6 serum, although she was different before as well. I think she just wasn’t as different as Melanie, for some reason. I’m still not convinced that their fathers actually received X3 and not some other serum.”

“That obvious alteration of Brager’s record hints at something different, but what of Draper?”

“They came in together, both admitted due to battlefield wounds. They were administered the serum at the same time, so it stands to reason that they both received the same serum.”

“I suppose it would,” he conceded.

“Alright, we have a general idea where they’re going, although not the particulars,” Stone said.

“Sir, I’m a little surprised that they’re going to Alaska, considering what you’ve said about the Brager girl,” John replied.

“I am as well,” Stone admitted.

“There’s not a camera viewing the ticket window for the Alaska ferry, but we did see them enter the building, so we must assume they took the ferry to Alaska. We don’t know what port they’ll exit at, but we can be fairly certain she’ll head for a place she’s familiar with. We need to find out what property her family has in the Anchorage region,” Stone told him.

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

“I have one question though, sir,” John said.

“What’s that, John?” Stone asked.

“How did they buy the tickets? That’s not cheap and it’s obvious from the records that they didn’t use some NSA account, like they did with the bus,” he said.

“I have no idea on that. The money’s there, so they didn’t manipulate minds to trick their way on, either. Somehow, they must have gotten a rather large amount of money, maybe from the plant that helped them escape. That’s just a guess, but it’s the best I have right now,” Stone told him.

As John was leaving, Stone’s phone rang. “This is Stone,” he said into the phone, as he answered it. After a long pause, he said, “Sir, I’ll recover the girls, as ordered, but I won’t kill them and I’ll do everything in my power to avoid civilian deaths,” he said, his face getting a little flushed, something Rebecca had never seen from him. “No sir, I will not,” he said, after another long pause. “Sir, if that’s your orders, then I resign, effective two hours from now. Out, sir,” he said, and hung up.

“Dr. Trasker ordered me to terminate the ‘experiments’, as he put it, but he was insistent that I recover the bodies for further study,” he said, looking at the floor.

“Why two hours?”

“I need to inform my staff and also execute a few failsafe plans I have in place. Would you be interested in accompanying me to Alaska? This is no longer funded by the program,” he added.

“I think I would,” she replied, a small smile on her worried face.

Pulling his radio from his shoulder, he fingered the mic button a moment before pushing it in to speak. “Men, this is Stone. I have tendered my resignation, effective two hours from now. I was ordered to perform a task that is against my moral code and I hope yours as well. I will not discuss that further, letting each of you decide your character based on your ethics as you choose. Know that I consider it a privilege and honor to have served with each one of you. I wish you all success. Over and out,” he said, then pulled the entire radio system from his clothing once done.

Next, he pulled out his laptop and began working very quickly on it, for the remainder of the time he had employed with the program. He ended with the printer spitting out several pages, one of which he handed to Rebecca. She saw a ticket on Alaska Airlines to Anchorage, boarding in two hours. “Can we make this? We’re still in Bellingham.” He nodded his head affirmatively.

One hour later, he and Rebecca were boarding a plane for Anchorage in the Seattle airport, thanks to him calling on his exiting requirement of relocation to a reasonable exit location. He was still dressed in his military style clothing, since he didn’t pack anything else.

Thanks to his clearance, he was able to carry his sidearm with him, but he kept it concealed for everyone’s peace of mind. The TSA people nearly had a cow when he and Rebecca required and were granted permission to bypass all of their checks. Many people in the security line looked less than pleased, as well.

“This is about a four hour flight, in which time, the girls will still be in the inner passage, if my belief and estimates are correct,” he told her.

“We should beat them to Anchorage by days,” she realized.

“Yes, but the ferry doesn’t go to Anchorage. The closest port is Whittier, if they go there, which I think they will. Any other port makes it very difficult for them to make it to Anchorage. From Whittier, I think they’ll take the train to Anchorage, but with her anything is possible. Regardless, once she gets to Anchorage I really start guessing, even though all of that is a guess, but with a high degree of confidence. Once they get off the train, my guess is no better than anyone else’s.”

“I think I’ll take your guess over most people,” she replied, openly admiring his instincts and discernment.

“Thank you for that vote of confidence. We’ll see how well I do, I suppose.”

“What are your plans once we get there?”

“I think we should pay a visit to the Brager’s, if Mr. Brager is even there. If he’s not, Mrs. Brager should be and you might get an opportunity to see the youngest child, who I understand is likely as brilliant as his sister, without the trauma she’s suffered. Speaking of that, have you looked closely at the surveillance images of Melanie?”

“She looks tired. Why,” she asked in reply.

“She looks more than tired. She looks gaunt, almost skeletal. She’s having a very bad time right now and I suspect that Aliyah is leading now, based on what I’m seeing. She looks strung out,” he told her.

“Good God, that poor girl,” she exclaimed.

“I agree, which made my decision a lot easier to make, although I would never harm a child if there is any choice, and there definitely is.”

A quiet settled on them then, which remained for the rest of the flight. When they landed in Anchorage, Stone got a car and they drove out of Anchorage to a nearby town called Eagle River.

Thanks to modern GPS, they pulled up to their destination without any problems. They both got out of the car and walked up to the front door of the nice but modest looking house.

Before they fully reached the top of the steps, the front door opened. “Good afternoon,” a woman greeted them.

“Good afternoon. Are you Becky Brager?” Stone asked.

“Yes, and whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

As pleasant as she was, Stone could see the clear signs of a defensive posture. This woman was ready for an attack. Being that her hand was being kept behind her, he suspected she was holding a weapon.

“Mrs. Brager, I’m Brian Stone and this is Rebecca Wilde. We came from Oakmont School and we need to talk to you,” he said.

“You killed my daughter and you want to talk to me?” she said, anger blossoming in her expression, although somewhat suppressed. There were very clear signs of the mother in the daughter, now that he was in front of her.

“Your daughter’s still alive and needs your help,” Rebecca said. Mrs. Brager took an involuntary step back, her hand slipping a little and showing a very nice handgun, similar to the one that Mr. Brager had with him.

“How dare you!” she exclaimed, recovering very rapidly. “First you send documented proof that she’s dead and now you try and tell me she’s alive?” she stated, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“I’m going to slowly pull out my laptop and show you images with timestamps. Melanie was brought into a covert government program and has escaped. She needs your help to stay free, if she can make it here, which I think she will if she wants to,” Stone explained.

“Be very slow with your movements,” Mrs. Brager commanded through her tears. Rebecca was completely at a loss with the command.

“Mrs. Brager is holding a weapon behind her back,” he explained to Rebecca, dispelling any further need of the game. Mrs. Brager removed her hand, bringing the weapon to bare.

Once he had the images on the screen, he slowly turned the screen to face her, and just as slowly, flipped through the images.

“She looks…bad,” she said, her voice catching.

“She was experimented on, which included some very addictive drugs. She’s suffering withdrawal from those drugs,” he said.

“You doped my baby girl?” she said, her anger rising again.

“No, but there are those in the program that don’t have the moral foundation that we do. We’re no longer with the program and want Melanie to come home. She needs to come home, more than anything. She’s suffered enough,” he said.

“You truly feel this, don’t you?” she said.

“I do,” he replied.

“And you,” she asked, turning to Rebecca.

“At first I didn’t, but yes. Thanks to Melanie, I do,” she said.

Becky Brager slumped against the wall, the pressure finally too much for her. She put the gun down inside and brought her hands to her face, crying uncontrollably.

It took a little while, but she finally regained control. Wiping her face, she looked back up at them. “Come in, please,” Becky Brager finally said. They all went inside, Becky retrieving the gun as they did, where the warmth was welcome after standing on the front porch in single digit temperatures for a while.

“Explain to me exactly what this program is and how you managed to trick us into sending our daughter to you. More importantly, explain exactly what you’ve done to my daughter while she was in your care.”

“We can’t explain the recruitment, since neither of us have anything to do with that. I’m a math teacher and brain specialist at the school and Mr. Stone’s the security chief. I suppose I should say ‘was’ for both of us, since we resigned our positions. As for her time at the school, it quickly became obvious that she was way above what we were capable of teaching her. Unfortunately, the head of the science program didn’t feel that way and placed her in a physics class with the high school students,” Rebecca began.

“Melanie could teach high school physics,” Mrs. Brager said, a smile of pride on her face.

“I knew that, but that woman wouldn’t listen and the Headmaster allowed her to make that decision, against my advice and that of the recruiter,” Rebecca replied.

“Would that recruiter be a young woman? I think her name was Trulin?” Becky asked.

“Emily Trulin,” Rebecca confirmed, which Becky nodded at.

“As you specifically mentioned this, I assume it contributes to your explanation,” Becky said.

“It unfortunately does. As a result of that, several of the high school students decided to indoctrinate her,” Rebecca said, but was not allowed to continue.

“Are you telling me that my little girl was attacked under your supervision,” she asked, a clearly threatening undertone in her voice.

Rebecca nodded. “More than once, and the attacks were sexual, as well as physical. The Headmaster would not do anything about it and the science teacher allowed herself to remain ignorant, although it was going on under her nose,” Rebecca said.

“They raped a ten year old girl? What kind of monsters do you have there?”

“During the last attempt, the attackers forced Melanie to take a serum which we had no knowledge of. It has increased her powers dramatically, and as a result, the research team noticed and took possession of her. We have no idea what they did, but we do know they gave her a drug called SHD. It’s a really bad mixture and is incredibly addictive. We have no idea how long or bad the withdrawal is, as no patient in the program has ever lived that long. It was supposed to have been banned, even for us,” she explained.

“Give me a good reason that I don’t shoot you right now,” Mrs. Brager asked, the timidity of earlier gone.

“Because we want to bring her home, where she belongs. There’s no way we can make up for our role in all of this, but I didn’t sign up to be a part of anything like that. When I was recruited to be a teacher and researcher in the program, I believed that what we were doing was good. We were trained to remain detached from the subjects that came in, always keeping them at arm’s length. Melanie is the first child to ever cause me to violate that training. Aside from being the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, she’s kind and compassionate and beautiful beyond imagination. She has an extreme self-confidence problem, which is even worse now, thanks to her time at Oakmont. She needs you to help her recover. She’ll likely need professional counselling, but that’ll be for you and your husband to decide. This is rather blunt and a little premature, but if you want a teacher that is familiar with her, and her abilities, I’m looking for a job,” Rebecca said, ending her narrative.

“Why on earth would I hire one of my daughter’s kidnappers and torturers?” Mrs. Brager asked, her face a cold mask. Rebecca noticed the use of that word, as she had with Melanie. There was nothing she could do to dispel it now, though, as she had tried with Melanie. She now recognized the truth of it.

Her expression changed faster than Rebecca could respond. “You’ve mentioned abilities more than once, in a context that doesn’t seem to imply her intelligence. What’re you referring to,” she asked, suspicious, the mask gone for now.

“Your daughter, and likely your son as well, have telepathic abilities. She can read minds, among many other things. Most of the kids born from this program manifest their talent at around ten years old. Your daughter was exceptionally early, aside from being exceptionally strong. I suspect you already knew this, based on some accidental comments Melanie made, here and there,” Rebecca said.

“What do you mean, ‘born from this program’?” she asked, her suspicion deepening.

“Your husband was severely wounded in an operation while he was in the army. He was sent to Oakmont hospital for treatment, where he was administered a serum to alter the DNA of his offspring, should he have any. Melanie, and your son, are products of this experiment,” Rebecca replied.

“I remember that. He almost didn’t survive. Michael too was wounded during that operation. Was he also given this serum?”

“Yes, he was,” Rebecca said.

“Michael has three children. Are all of them at this school, or whatever it is?”

“There were three?” Rebecca asked, incredulous at this revelation.

“You didn’t know that,” Becky noticed. “How interesting. Good for you Mikey,” she said.

“So how many of his kids did you steal?”

“We have two girls. That’s all we knew of,” Rebecca admitted.

“What are the names of the girls,” she asked.

“The older is Abigail and the younger is Aliyah,” she replied.

“At least Mikey figured out something was wrong before he lost all of his girls. That also explains why he stopped talking to us,” she said, obviously thinking out loud. “I’m guessing that my husband went to find out if this was true before he told me anything, which means he’s looking for her now.”

“That’s correct and he knows she’s alive,” Stone replied.

“I suspect he’s still not telling me, in case something goes wrong. I love him for protecting me, but he should’ve told me. Well, that is what it is. I can’t change him, God love him. As for you two, if you’re true to your word, then prove it,” she stated, without any instruction on how.

“I’m pretty sure that she took the ferry from Bellingham to Whittier. Today is Monday, so she should arrive in Whittier on Friday, if I’m right. I believe she’ll take the train from Whittier to Anchorage, left to her own devices. From there, I have no idea. Do you have property in the area she might feel safe at?” he asked.

“She would feel safest here.”

He shook his head, refuting her claim. “I don’t think so. She knows the school is a government program and she’s very paranoid and will avoid coming home. Aside from believing that they would look here first and she doesn’t want to get caught, she doesn’t want to endanger her family, which she rightly feels she will. No, I think she’ll try and find some place she can hide from everyone, including her family,” he said.

“You’re probably right. She’s so much like her Daddy. God, it must be killing her inside,” she replied, tears forming in her eyes again.

“Mommy, are you sad?” a little voice said from the corner. Rebecca and Stone both looked over at the little redhead boy, almost the spitting image of Melanie, but with the rough and tumble of a boy and more red in his hair.

“No honey,” she said, holding her arms for him. He ran into them, letting her wrap them around him. Either he realized she needed the comfort, or he was just allowing it for the strangers. Either way, his intelligence radiated from him, even more so than Melanie, who had likely learned to suppress it. What both noticed immediately was that he was turned toward them with an almost threatening expression, like he was protecting his Momma, although she was holding him. The picture was too cute for either of them to avoid smiling.

As they were admiring the seen, Becky picked up her phone and dialed. It was only a moment before she spoke.

“Randy, there are two people here from that school. They say they want to help us find Melanie and get her home,” she said, and listened for a while. “Yeah, that pretty much describes the man. There’s a woman with him. She says she was a math teacher at the school and she told me what they did to her there,” she said, pausing as emotion overcame her. “Randy, it’s horrible. Our baby has suffered so much. She’s never going to be right again,” she said, her voice breaking and tears streaming down her face again.

“Randy, they said that Ben will read minds too. We’re going to go through this all over again,” she said. “You knew this,” she then said, after a long pause. “You should have told me!” she exclaimed. There was a much longer pause then, as she listened to her husband.

“Mr. Stone believes that she’s heading this way, probably on the ferry. He thinks she’ll try and get on the train in Whittier when the ship docks, and that she’ll try and find some place she feels safe to hide, from them and from us,” she said.

“What!” she exclaimed. “You expect me to not go to my little girl, when she’s hurt?” she said, her voice raised only a little, but the inflection clearly tense. “That’s not possible,” she said, after another long pause. “Okay, I’ll let you handle it, but tell me everything from now on. Promise me,” she commanded. “No, I want your word,” she insisted, when he obviously tried to avoid saying what she wanted to hear. “I’ll hold you to that, Mr. Brager,” she said. “I love you too,” she said, and hung up.

“He’s on his way home and doesn’t want us meeting her at the ferry terminal or the train station. He told me he’ll handle it, and insists that you two are not to be seen by anyone. He’s worried about her mental stability right now and thinks she might strike out at anyone, even me,” she said, her eyes very watery.

“He might be right. The drugs I know she was on are very bad and I’m not sure of everything they gave her,” Rebecca said.

“What’s in that stuff? I think you called it SHD.”

“It’s a mix of heroin, cocaine, amobarbital and a number of other components that I don’t know. They likely gave her other things though, besides that. I know they were giving her Sterocartalide not long after she arrived. They added something else shortly after the assaults, but I wasn’t made aware of that, so I have no idea what it was. All of these drugs have a similar purpose, though. They’re intended to bring a subject to their full potential as quickly as possible. No subject has ever been given that many at the same time and there are no studies on addiction or withdrawal of any of them. We only know how addictive SHD is due to recorded observations. It was banned before I joined, by the same man that created it. He quickly realized how bad it was,” Rebecca told her.

“My God! What kind of people give that stuff to a person, much less a child?”

“The type that care only about their science. The end justifies the means, to them,” Rebecca told her.

“What else can she do, that Randy would be that worried about her?”

“As I said, there have been no proper observations of her skills, but the things Stone has seen her do that worry him are, first, she can start fires with her mind and she can create some kind of force field around herself. We also know she can attack other people’s minds. She may have other skills, but we’re really not sure,” she stated.

“Even her telepathic skills, the ones we’re setup to train, are somewhat of a mystery to us. She never used her abilities where we could observe. She was very secretive, even when we were trying desperately to help her. It only got worse after the assaults. She’s the only telepath we’ve ever seen that successfully hid her thoughts and she’s also the only one that has ever bypassed our mental blocks. We have devices that keep telepaths out of our minds, but it seems that they don’t work with her. We just discovered that, which is kind of a sobering thought. What we have surmised as far as telepathy is that she can turn her skill off, she can obviously read minds, she can project images, complete with emotion, she can speak mind to mind, another new skill for us and she can shield her mind. Beyond that, we really don’t know and most of those skills have never been observed in a telepath as young as her. What is really incredible is that she has taught Aliyah at least some of those skills,” Rebecca said.

“You want to continue studying her. That’s why you’re here,” Becky said, her brow furrowing in suspicion.

“Yes, I do want to study her, but there’s more to it than that. Understand, I’m trained as a scientist. My entire career has been devoted to working with these kids and observing them, but that has not removed my humanity. If I never get to study her or even see her again, I still want to help her. What she has gone through is horrible and there’s no way to ever make it up to you, much less to her. However, I have unique skills, aside from a PhD in math and in human brain biology, I’ve worked with telepaths for years. I know something of what they’re capable of and what they need. Melanie’s different, by leaps and bounds, but I’m still more qualified than any other teacher you can find,” Rebecca replied.

“We have to get her home and safe, before we can even consider the future. She’ll likely need a lot of therapy. I have no idea how messed up she is. She was already hurting before we allowed her to go to that place, which is part of what convinced us to let her go, but now it’s magnitudes worse, and we’re partly to blame,” she stated.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” Rebecca told her.

After exchanging phone numbers, Rebecca and Stone left to find a hotel, where they would wait some unknown amount of time. That was really hard for both of them, but they spent it taking short trips in the area to see the incredible scenery. The area really was beautiful.