Blindspots Read online

  Not only could he see that face, but he recognized it as if he were a normal person looking into a mirror.

  Breathlessly, Jake scanned the top section of data. She was born in 1954, current residence (as of 1976), Toronto. Admitted as a test subject in July, 1976. And there was a date of death: November 12, 1976. His heart gave a lurch. She was only twenty-two. He stared at the name for a long moment, feeling a sudden, inexplicable wave of sadness.

  Tempted to read on, but feeling the pressure of time, the sense that everything, all of a sudden, now depended on him, he closed the file and was about to get up and check the other screens which seemed to be showing various live feeds from around the institute. But first, just one more name.

  He clicked on “Nick DeWolfe.” A file opened. A picture of a young man, handsome despite the long unkempt hair. I can see him too…

  And suddenly he had the strongest feeling, exactly the same as he felt with Kaitlin. Trembling, he was about to close the file and open up the one on Carrie again, when he saw the date of death. November 12, 1976.

  Wait…

  He clicked back on Carrie's file and scanned the data. The same date of death?

  Back to the right side of the screen, he moved the pointer to another name at random: “David Fritz.” Another picture, and by now Jake was hardly surprised he recognized this man as well – a balding sixty-ish man in a business suit. But he didn't react with the same intensity as he had experienced with Carrie or Nick.

  He skipped over all the other information and went right to the date of death.

  The same.

  Closed the file, clicked on Elizabeth Ellison. Another familiar, visible face. Date of Death: November 13, 1976. A day later… okay. What the hell? Did their bus go off the road? Or did they all drink the same Kool Aid?

  Tommy Sorrento. Nine years old. Familiar face. Date of Death: November 12, 1976.

  Beatrice Kenway. Forty-seven. Died the same day.

  Holy shit.

  Jake sat back, blinking. Six people he somehow recognized, dead now thirty-one years, and all of them here at one time… He scanned a few files again. They had each arrived here during the summer of 1976.

  And they all died on or around November twelfth of the same year. Did they all have Prosopagnosia too? Did they come here seeking relief, only to find death? Or was it something else entirely?

  The answers were in those files, he was sure.

  But time had run out.

  In the corner of his eye, he saw movement on the next monitor, a screen that was split into eight sections. Each screen showed black and white views of the institute, mostly in shadow with faint lights punctuating the gloom. But in the second row on the left, he could make out Kaitlin, her body limp, being dragged into an office by the two men in black, with the slender nurse behind her.

  Jake rocked out of his chair. Scanned the table and lunged for a cordless phone.

  No dial tone.

  He looked around for an intercom or something to communicate to the front desk.

  Nothing. Shit. And no cell phones anywhere. What, was everything done with smoke signals? Hoping to send an email out to the authorities, he bent back to the computer, tried to start up Internet Explorer, but immediately got a 'network unavailable' error.

  Just my luck. Then he heard a sharp metallic sound and glanced back to the door. The handle was turning first counter-clockwise, then spinning fast the other way.

  Jake stood, hands in fists, looking around for a weapon, anything. Thoughts of Kaitlin, dead or dying, paralyzed him with fright.

  The wheel stopped, and the door started to open.

  Jake lifted the glass case, grabbed the handle of the hourglass and ran to the side of the door just as it opened. The taller of the goons – the bald man built like Fenrik back in prison – stepped inside.

  Jake had a half-second to think of poor Fenrik, and how normal, how mundane an antagonist he seemed now. Shielding himself behind the door, Jake waited until the man's bald head came into view… then put everything he had into his best two-handed overhead, slamming the hourglass full-force down onto the man’s skull.

  The man crumpled without even a whimper, but the shattering of the hourglass echoed like a shotgun blast throughout the vault… and triggered the memory of his hypnosis session with Alexa. This destruction wasn't as dramatic, but it was liberating all the same, a great feeling to drop that bastard.

  Jake stared at him, lying there in a crumpled heap. Oh Jesus. Jake held the ruined golden base of the hourglass another second, then let it drop on the man's body, amidst the broken metal and shattered glass. Blood was seeping from the back of the man's bald head, around the triangles of embedded glass and the clumps of red sand.

  The body twitched once, then lay still.

  Christ. One more murder…

  Jake peeked out the door, into the cone of light until it was devoured by the darkness. No one there, at least no one that he could see.

  Run!

  5.

  Gabriel, still huddled in the blanket, sat shivering as his mother bandaged his cuts and scrapes while they were parked on the side of the road, making their final preparations and discussing strategy.

  They were still about two hundred yards from the entrance to Daedalus, its outline barely visible up ahead in the blinding storm. The Hummer's side door opened, the wind and snow roared in, and the driver bent inside and started handing out guns and flashlights.

  Gabriel stared at all the equipment and weaponry. "Are we going to war?"

  Indra gave him a smile, matching the one on Darcy's face. "Yes, I believe we are. A war for our very souls."

  #

  Gabriel felt even dizzier as he contemplated the weaponry laid out before him. Indra helped himself to a gun and a flashlight. Cocked the hammer, pulled the magazine and checked the ammunition.

  The driver, Hank, was arming himself as he slid behind the wheel again – two pistols in his belt, a shotgun in his lap.

  Darcy reached back and snatched up the remaining .45 out of the bag, checked and then armed it, just as fast as Hank had done. "As long as we're at the buffet, I'm helping myself."

  Indra gave a muffled laugh. "It's a wonder your husband managed to stay alive around you."

  "I wish I had poisoned his coffee on our honeymoon. Goddamn him."

  "He just may be damned," Indra whispered.

  "Wait," Gabriel said slowly, holding his head and trying to catch up with what they had told him after his rescue. "I'm still not getting all this. Isn't it more likely that my father just befriended Alexa's parents, or – sorry, Mom, but maybe the girl was his, and he left her instructions? Like where to find the key to his vault, to the bank accounts—"

  "Yes," Indra said. "It is far more likely. However, it does not account for us. The Six."

  "Or his notes," said Darcy, " The ones I found and never showed you. 'His Grand Experiment.'"

  "Hang on," Gabriel said, holding up his hands. "I don’t mean to belittle your suffering, Indra, or your miraculous ability to see one another, but there has to be another explanation."

  "There isn't," his mother said.

  "You really believe it? That Dad's still alive?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "He's not," Indra countered. "Not in the sense you mean. Your father did not bathe in the Fountain of Youth or sip from the Holy Grail."

  Gabriel shivered. "Egyptian Mysticism. Reincarnation. I don't… I can't believe any of that."

  Indra shrugged. "You are free to believe what you will, but your father somehow implanted a message deep within his soul – his Ba, as the Egyptians called it; the part of a person that lives on after the body dies. He gave himself a command, most likely something simple. Perhaps that in his next life, he must seek out a place, something like a safe-deposit box or a time capsule buried underground. Somewhere he would have stashed journals, pictures, maybe a diary – a dossier, essentially, on himself… to himself. A way to reawaken his past life's memorie
s."

  Gabriel shook his head. "Alexa. But, I can't--" He looked at his mother. "So what was this Grand Experiment? If he could prove that people could retain their memories, recapture their prior lives in the next one, then…"

  "Then he'd damn well do it himself." Darcy waited until that settled. "Get it? For his test he implanted a form of Prosopagnosia in all of 'em. All six. A kind of spiritual-level command that they would be blind to everybody except each other. You know, like those stage-show hypnotists who take a volunteer from the audience and then convince the poor sap that he can't see anyone else in the room? That he's really all alone… and then he's told to strip down to his underwear and dance around like a chicken."

  She smiled to herself and then focused on Indra. "He ran the same trick in 1976. You volunteers… you were to be the true test: he was sure about reincarnation, but what he needed to confirm was whether when we came back we could maintain the ability to follow hypnotically-implanted suggestions – in this case, the command to recognize only the others in the experiment. He made these volunteers blind to everyone but each other in the next life, essentially mimicking Face Blindness. So then when they came back—"

  Gabriel shifted, leaned forward. "—they might find their way here for treatment."

  "Exactly. With this clinic specializing in Prosopagnosia, he was reasonably sure that at least one or two would show up here for care. And if they recognized each other – and also had the corroborating evidence of birthmarks or retrievable memories, it would confirm his theory. And then – even if he were an old man at that point – he'd try it on himself."

  "But he didn't wait."

  "No," Darcy said.

  "He killed himself only a year later," Gabriel said, tensing. This was the big question, the million-dollar question he'd wrestled with all his adult life, living in the shadow of a cruel, distant father who had chosen to end his life without so much as a goodbye or word of explanation. "Why?"

  His mother said, "The superficial reason: cancer. Diagnosed with it in 1976, just weeks after finishing with the six volunteers. At the time, I thought he was just a coward and didn't want to suffer, to go through the chemo and what have you. But now… now I can damn well guess the real reason."

  "He did not have the luxury of time," Indra said quietly, his voice barely heard over the winds buffeting the Hummer. "He could not sit back and wait for the results of his experiment, for confirmation."

  "Right," she said, impatience bleeding out in her voice. "He didn't want to miss their return, which he might have if he hung on, surviving only a few more years. So he did it: repeated the psycho-gobbledygook, maybe in a tape recorder after he took himself under. Whatever. He told his Ba, or his soul or what have you, to come back at a certain age in the next life, go to some secret place only he knew about, and then find the stuff he left for himself. Take possession of the bank accounts and investments which had been earning interest for twenty years, take possession of--"

  "Daedalus," Gabriel said. "Alexa. At twenty-one. The year she dropped out of school. But, she's blind."

  "Indra thinks it's Karma," Darcy voiced, a broad smile on her face. "Serves the bastard right to be struck with a birth defect even worse than what he forced on his poor subjects."

  Gabriel held his head. "The secret to immortality. A seamless consciousness throughout every life. Born in a bad way, inferior social structure or with a physical impediment? End your life, hit the reset button and start again. Your memories, your spirit, your very self will come along for the ride. If you do it right."

  Darcy groaned. "As if one life isn't misery enough? You ask me, I prefer having nothin' to do at the end of this dance but shut off the music and kill the lights. But anyway, enough talk." She hefted the .45. "Let's get to work."

  6.

  Through the basement without incident, Jake took the stairs, racing at full-tilt, imagining the roar of a helicopter in pursuit, suddenly sure he could smell palm trees and the beach air. He sprinted up the steps, two at a time. At the fourth floor, in the soft flickering light, a nurse saw him.

  Jake thrust himself at her, knocked her into a wall and was about to punch, when he held back. he turned her head both directions, looking for the tattoo.

  "You're not one of them," he got out in a wheezing breath.

  "One of--?"

  "No time. Sorry if I hurt you!"

  Jake pushed off, and bounded back up the stairs. He wasn't sure if he could enlist any help from the staff, wasn't sure how powerful Alexa and her team were, but he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from saving Kaitlin. He had to free her before Alexa did anything to her mind.

  Like what she tried to do to me.

  He had to do everything for her, although he wasn’t sure why. He didn't understand all that business with the files and the six dead people from the past, or why he felt such a bond with this person named Carrie – or why he could see any of their faces. But it didn't matter now.

  He had to get to her.

  At the top floor he slid to a halt, seeing the long corridor flickering in red tones, paintings hanging crooked and shaking with the gusting winds.

  He turned right. She was on this floor somewhere, he knew that much from the monitor. Time to go door by door. He reached for the closest one, turned it – locked.

  Break it down? He glanced around, into the shadows in both directions, then to the stairs to the other side. At least ten rooms on either side, twenty doors to break down. Plus those two at either end of the hall… suites? Offices? She would be in one of those.

  Suddenly he heard a scream from that direction – the last door on the right.

  He reached the door, barely slowing, then turned the handle and rushed in. A lone candle burned in a little dish on the desk. Curtains were drawn. So dark… A chair faced him, Kaitlin, tied up.

  Alexa was bent over her, securing a gag in her mouth. As soon as the door opened, she spun, but Jake's momentum carried him in and knocked her over. He threw a punch for good measure, connecting with the side of Alexa's head as she slammed into the desk. She knocked the candle down, and her dark glasses fell off giving Jake a second to see the opaque white eyes, the mask of pain and fury, before the flame went out. He found Kaitlin in the dark, ripped out her gag and quickly freed her arms and feet.

  She bolted to her feet, threw her arms around him in a quick hug. "We've got to go!"

  A blur and Alexa appeared, aiming something that sizzled in the shadows behind the desk. An electric sparking light, and twin cords came shooting out, just missing Kaitlin and jabbing into Jake's chest.

  He screamed as something jolted through him, rooting him to the spot. He'd been hit with Tasers a couple times back in prison, and he had hoped to never feel one again. No such luck.

  He had an instant to whimper, "Run…" before the inevitable blackout.

  7.

  Alexa jumped back to her feet. She'd hit one of them for sure, probably Jake. That leaves...

  Something came rumbling across the floor at her. Alexa blocked it with her leg, feeling the pain up her calf. Felt like a chair, Kaitlin kicked a goddamn chair at me. She shoved it aside. The candle's out. We're in the dark now, I have the advantage. She felt along the ground, found her cane and immediately jumped up, swinging at the place where she had heard a rustling sound.

  The girl shrieked. Gotcha! Alexa stepped forward, swinging up and sideways. Nothing. She cocked her head, listening…heard a brush of motion, scuffling feet… the door slamming.

  Alexa lunged, but tripped on something…Jake's body. She got up, found the door and flung it open. She heard the running feet, sensed they were turning now…onto the stairs.

  Shit. She hadn't been able to even start deprogramming Kaitlin. Alexa dug out her walkie-talkie phone. "Critchwell!"

  Nothing. "Critchwell!" She groaned. "Ursula?"

  Where the hell were they?

  The phone crackled. "Ursula here."

  "Where are you?"

  "On my wa
y up."

  "Stop Kaitlin! She's heading down the stairs now."

  "Sorry… I'm in the elevator."

  "What?" She almost shattered the phone in her grip.

  "Just testing the elevator, in case you needed to bring Indra up."

  Alexa fumed. How much longer until she could be rid of these incompetents? The hell with poison, she would strangle the girl herself.

  "What does it matter where we handle Indra?"

  "But the other patients, and the staff—"

  "I don't care who sees us. Anyone who interferes, kill them. We're almost finished here, and I've waited too long. Where's Critchwell?"

  "I don't know. I left him in the vault. He was going after Jake."

  "Griffith got into the vault?"

  "He knocked out Maria when she opened the door, and—"

  "For God's sake! Jake's up here. I got him with the Taser, but he released Kaitlin first. We have to assume Critchwell is dead." Hopefully. Save me the trouble. Alexa slammed her cane against the floor in frustration.

  And then she heard the elevator doors open. "I'm here," Ursula said. "Should I go after Kaitlin?"

  "No. I need you to secure Jake. I don't have time now to deal with him – or to figure out why he didn't follow orders. Forget Kaitlin. I'll handle her personally, and Indra too, if he's coming."

  "We think he's here," Ursula said. "Nestor saw a vehicle approaching, and sent me—"

  "Fine." She dialed Nestor. He picked up at once. Should have just used him from the beginning. "Nestor. Hide yourself in the lobby somewhere. Kaitlin's coming down by the stairs."

  "Already done," Nestor's voice came back. "And a Hummer just pulled into the garage. I'm guessing it's Indra."

  "You know what to do."

  "Yes."