The Dark at the End Read online

“Your brother?” she whispers, when they’re far enough ahead of us. “And Smith had him? Does that mean he…”

  “Yeah,” I whisper back, as low as I can. “He has a power too. Though I don’t know what, yet. Dad would visit him every once in a while, but most of the time he just ignored him.”

  “Wow,” she says. “Just…wow. That’s crazy. Your dad is a piece of work.”

  “Wait.” I stop her, at the top of the stairs. “I forgot to ask, before. Did you get the serum?”

  There’s a long pause. She looks down at her feet, and my hopes sink. It didn’t work. I’m stuck running forever.

  Then she looks up and grins. “It’s us. Of course we got it.”

  Hope floats me down the rest of the stairs. I’d almost forgotten what it feels like.

  31

  JAKE

  Meet Me in the Dark by Otherwise

  We end up driving about half an hour away, out of the DC main area, and eating at a Denny’s. It’s not a typical Dedushka move, since there are security cameras, but I’m grateful. I practically drool over the pictures of the biggest breakfast imaginable, and Lucas excitedly orders a burger and fries. It’s probably been years since he’s been to a place like this.

  If I close my eyes and listen to the talk of the other late-night customers and clink of plates, the smell of fried food and breakfast, it could be a normal Denny’s outing from a year ago. With Chris and the theater gang, including Rachel, after a show.

  Rachel’s leg brushes against mine and I realize I’m happy, in this one moment. I’m missing the biggest piece—I still have to get Myka and Mom back—but half of my family and more is back together, we’re safe for now, and we have the serum.

  We have the serum. It may not work, but if it does…I could be normal. Safe forever. Not have to do any more tunnels like Smith made me do…and like he tried to make me do. That corrupt, dark world my power drags me into.

  I have helped people with it, though. Sometimes.

  Dedushka and Rachel tell us about their trip, a strange adventure with the Salty Dog bar and a boat and the police. A treasure hunt. I wish I’d been with them instead. I catch them up on what happened with me, all of it. Even Bunny. Lucas listens too. I don’t know how much of that he knew.

  Dedushka goes purple when I tell him about Smith shooting Bunny, and how he treated Lucas. He mutters to himself in Russian. That’s always a bad sign.

  “I hope that means we’re going to stop Smith someday,” I say, the words rough in my mouth. I couldn’t let myself think of it until we got out, clear, but I can’t let Bunny’s death be avenged by one punch. There’s got to be more to it than that. And holding Lucas like an animal. I should’ve done more when I had the chance.

  “Da,” Dedushka says. “Someday, I promise. But first we must deal with your—” He waves at both me and Lucas. “Your father. My son. Who also must pay.”

  “No argument there,” I say.

  “But what did he do?” Lucas asks. He flinches when all three of us turn to look at him, like a light is too bright. But he ducks his head, blinks, and goes on. “I…I’ve been thinking about it. He got your mom and sister out of Smith’s way, right? Maybe he was smart to do that. Cautious. And he’s running a lab, but is he forcing anyone? I mean, okay. It’s not good. But he’s not…evil, like Smith is.”

  Dedushka and I share a look. I get it. He just found out his dad isn’t dead, like I did before, and doesn’t want him to be the bad guy. Even though Dad threw him away, and would use him in an instant if he had control of him. Even though I remember with chills how Dad looked when he told me I was going to have to stay underground for the rest of my life, how I was going to ‘help’ him. But I guess I don’t need to smash his image to pieces to Lucas. Not right away.

  “Not evil,” I say carefully. “That’s true. But misguided. Making bad choices. You don’t want to stay with him, Lucas.”

  “Listen. He is speaking truth,” Dedushka says.

  Lucas rubs his thumb over his fork, staring at the table. He sucks in his cheeks, in a weird way I saw him do yesterday. Like he just licked a lemon.

  “I met him too,” Rachel chimes in, soft. “He’s…obsessed with the powers. I think he wants one for himself, and that’s all he thinks about.”

  That. I know he does.

  “You have a power too, yes?” Dedushka asks. He sets one hand on Lucas’s arm. “What is it?”

  Lucas shakes his head, still fork-focused.

  “It’s okay,” Rachel says. “It’s safe, with us.”

  Dedushka nods. “I had power also.” He pulls at his beard, stops. “Long ago. I started this all. So tell me, boy, what did I do to you?”

  Lucas rubs a hand, quick, through his hair—making it stick up even higher—and meets my gaze. “Do you have any personal things with you?”

  “Of mine?” I ask. “Like an object?”

  He nods solemnly.

  “Do you use objects like I do?” I ask, low. “Can you do the same thing, see what people are seeing and hearing? See where they are?”

  He shakes his head. “No. But I see something…feel something…when I touch a personal thing that was important to someone.” He swallows, and bounces his knee. “I see the past.”

  Dedushka whistles through his teeth. “Death?”

  Lucas frowns. “No. Not like that, at least most of the time. I see some event, or more than one event, that was significant to the person, that was linked to that object.”

  The waitress brings our food, and we abandon the conversation and attack it like wolves. Well, Lucas and I do. Dedushka looks amused, watching us, and Rachel slightly horrified. Once we’ve eaten half the food on the plate, I chug some coffee and look at Lucas.

  “You saw me tunnel and control someone, for Smith.” He nods, mouth full of fries. “What did you use? The green glass bottle?”

  He nods again. I should’ve broken that thing when I left, or left it somewhere. It keeps causing heartache. Bunny…

  “And the little girl?” I ask. “He brought you in after I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.”

  He scowls. It changes his whole face, makes him older. “I saw what happened to her. When they took her off the street.”

  “You…saw?”

  Lucas gives me the barest of nods. Dedushka glares at me, then claps him on the shoulder. “It is a hard seeing you have. I am sorry.”

  Rachel lays a hand on my knee under the table. It does sound rough. Probably most of the events he sees are traumatic, or they wouldn’t come through in an object, be stored that way. Not as bad as Dedushka’s was, though, all death.

  Wait. I turn to Rachel, whisper in her ear. “How much serum is there?”

  She sighs. “I thought of that,” she whispers back, her breath tickling my cheek. “It’s not very much. Probably only one dose. We’ll have to wait to make more, if you’re both going to take it.”

  Crap crap crap. Which means we have to get Mom and Myka out first, and then find some way to make more, to duplicate whatever is in there, or either me or Lucas will be stuck forever with the power. Running forever. I was hoping to take it now and be able to waltz into Dad’s lab, tell him I’m useless, and walk out with them. Now it’s way more complicated.

  She takes it out of her pocket and sets it on the table, a red vial. “You could still take it, here. Now. Get rid of your power. Leave a few drops…”

  Dedushka and Lucas go silent, watching us. I touch it, this vial that could solve everything. I want to take it. I look at Dedushka, then Lucas.

  I can’t. Just in case.

  I turn back to Rachel. “Better not,” I say lightly. “I might still need tunneling to track them down, make sure they’re okay.” I curl a finger around the smooth glass. “Should I hang on to it, though? So if I need to—“

  “You should keep,” Dedushka says. “And if you need to, swallow it all.”

  There’s silence for a while, while we all finish our food. Then Lucas clears his
throat.

  “Do you think…we could stop and get a book? Or two?” He sucks in his cheeks, lets it out again. “I’m kind of used to reading all the time. Or watching TV. It…um…calms me.” He bounces his leg again, so much that it makes his whole body jiggle. “And I don’t think we can get a TV.”

  Rachel, the ex-library aide, beams at him. “I think we can get you a book or two. And then we head to West Virginia.”

  32

  RACHEL

  And Then There Were Two (Magnificent Seven soundtrack)

  by Elmer Bernstein

  When we get close to Green Bank, West Virginia, we start seeing signs for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Then we see it, a huge white telescope that looms over everything. We pull over to read an information sign, to find out what we’re dealing with.

  “The Green Bank telescope is the world’s largest steerable radio telescope,” the sign says. The observatory builds telescopes for use around the world. It seems like the observatory is the focus of the town—that most of the people who live here have something to do with it. So…this whole place is full of scientists and government people. It’s also something called a mandatory United States National Radio Quiet Zone: there are no cell phones or wi-fi allowed in the whole town, because they interfere with the radio signals they’re monitoring. They check at the border, and ask you to shut phones and computers off until you leave. Extreme big government.

  I rest my chin on Jake’s shoulder as I read. “Ah. Smart.”

  It’s not a coincidence that John put his new base here. Activity for the observatory means lots of cover for the activity of a secret government base, with the same type of people coming in and out. And security built-in, if you go through town.

  “Right?” Jake says. “He’s here on purpose. Cover. Plus I don’t know if cell phones and wi-fi affect psychic activity—but I bet Dad thinks it would work better without interference.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “I don’t know about that. It’s a good thing we don’t have cell phones, though.”

  “The Devil’s tools,” Dedushka says, and spits over his shoulder.

  Well, then.

  Lucas wanders off to look at the field in front of us, or maybe the mountains behind. There are a lot of mountains here, the famous Allegheny mountains, crouched all around the town. We drove through some too, windows down, cool air blowing in, the smell of pine filling the car. I wish we could’ve held onto that for a while, that moment of peace. But we’re here now.

  We don’t have a plan. We know where the base is, because of the coordinates Jake saw, and Dedushka and I figured out on the map where that is. It’s not in the town itself, so we don’t actually have to go through the border checkpoint. But what does it look like? A metal shed? A trapdoor in the ground?

  Jake suggested we lure John out of his hideout and make him give up Abby and Myka by force. Dedushka wants to present himself at the door and ask to talk to John. He thinks somehow he can negotiate with him and make him see how crazy he’s being. I think they’re both suicidal. I don’t think we should see John at all, at least not at first. I think we should observe the base for a while. Watch how it works, who goes in and out, and see if we can sneak in and find Abby and Myka.

  Okay, I have no idea how a secret base works, other than the one of John’s I saw briefly before. I don’t even know much about military bases in general. Maybe they’re impossible to sneak into. But that’s why I want to observe it first.

  Lucas sat in the back of the car while we were discussing it all and bit on his thumb, staring out the window or reading his book while we argued it out. I feel terrible for him. He’s been thrown into this bizarre situation, with people he doesn’t know but is supposed to be related to.

  At least we all have new clothes now, normal clothes we bought from Walmart, so Jake and Lucas don’t look like jail escapees, and Dedushka and I aren’t filthy.

  I just wish I knew how to handle all of this. Any of this. Jake seems hard again, like he did when I first saw him after DARPA. Locking him up, and killing that woman in front of him, Bunny…it messed with him all over again. Sometimes I can barely remember what he was like before all this, before he went away. I mean, he was always intense. But there was confidence, a sense that he knew where he was going and he’d get there no matter what. I was drawn to that. He was easy to talk to, quick to flirt. I didn’t see the anger that’s always there now, simmering just under the surface. And the sadness.

  I wish I could take it all away from him…but sometimes I wonder if he’s just changed. If that’s how he is now, or if it will lighten once we get his family back, and get rid of his power.

  We went through all that search just to get hold of that vial. I want him to take it already and deal with everything from there.

  Lucas loops back, and leans against the sign. He shuffles his feet in the dirt, looking down. “I thought of something.”

  He doesn’t continue. After a couple seconds I nod, look at him encouragingly. “What did you think of?”

  “Mr. Smith…he’s my legal guardian.” His face pinches. “He adopted me, when my mother gave me up.”

  “Jesus,” Jake says.

  I cringe. As a guardian, he’s about the worst person I could think of. Unstable, terrifying, violent.

  Lucas swallows, but doesn’t answer. I don’t think that’s why he’s telling us.

  “Wait,” Jake says. “So he has a legal right to chase you? To send cops after you, or us?”

  He nods, an earnest bobbing. “That’s why I thought of it. In case he can send the police.”

  “We could fight him, though,” I say. “He’s abusive. There’s no way he’s a good guardian…”

  I drift off, looking at Jake, then Dedushka. Imagine it. A courtroom with Jake standing in it, trying to explain how he would be a good guardian. With the small fact that to most of the world, except a tiny branch of the government, he’s legally dead. And that branch of the government wants to keep him in a cell. Dedushka’s not much better—they were looking for him too, even before this. He’s still standing by the car, leaning on the doorframe, his beard draped over it. Studying the observatory hanging over the town. I don’t even know if he heard us.

  There’s Abby, the only normal one. But we can’t even get to her. And I keep forgetting…Lucas isn’t even hers.

  “We’ll just have to keep you away from him,” Jake says. “And it’s not like we’re exactly legal anyway.”

  “While we’re running, yeah.” Lucas blinks, fast. “But if we do go with…meet with…John, would he turn me back over to Mr. Smith? He could.” He swallows. “Mr. Smith would be so mad…”

  “No,” Jake says, firm. “There is no way John would ever give you back to Smith.”

  But I’m not sure John’s better. “I don’t think we should let John anywhere near him,” I say. “Not now.”

  Dedushka’s watching us now, his eyes sad.

  “I won’t let John take you either, okay?” Jake adds. “We’ll find a way out of this, take the serum, and live normal lives. Together somewhere.”

  Lucas bites his lip. He has no reason to believe us over anyone else, to trust us. Does he even want to live with Jake? Does he want to be normal? He hasn’t talked enough to know. “I’m hungry,” he says, finally.

  I laughs and ruffle his hair, though he shrinks away a little. “You’re always hungry.”

  “I will go fetch food,” Dedushka says. “You stay here, rest. I will go.”

  “Here? Why don’t we all go?” I ask. “That way we can have a say in what we get. So you don’t bring more of those horrible runza things.”

  I grin at him. Runza are Russian sandwiches, filled with ground beef, onion, and cabbage. He was so excited when we ran across a restaurant in Sarasota that served them. I was not quite as excited. I’ve teased him about them a couple of times, and normally I get a glare back.

  Dedushka just turns away and drops into the driver’s seat. He starts the
car, lifts a hand to us, then backs up and drives off.

  There’s a long pause, when we all watch the dust fly up, then settle slowly down again. He left us standing at an information sign. There isn’t even anywhere to sit.

  Jake looks at me. “Wrongness?”

  “Severe wrongness.” I glare in the direction he went, shading my eyes. “Tell me that’s not the way the base is.”

  He growls under his breath. “Of course that’s the way the base is. And of course that’s what he’s doing. Going to confront Dad himself, just like he wanted. Leaving without a word. Idiot.”

  “Hey,” I say, eyebrows raised. “It’s the Lukin method. Runs in the family.”

  “At least I told you,” Jake says, low. “I explained. I would never just…leave.”

  I touch his arm. That’s true. He did explain…the second time.

  “Are we going to follow him?” Lucas asks, eager. “To the base?”

  Jake and I have a silent conversation. The risks, the chance of all of us ending up stuck with John…versus taking a look at the base, finding out what Dedushka’s up to, and what happens when he gets there. It all ends up at the same answer. Like always, we don’t really have a choice.

  “Yeah,” Jake says. “We’re going to follow him. Just to see. Let’s start walking.”

  *

  Fortunately the base coordinates aren’t ridiculously far from where we were, walking distance. It’s on the fringe of town, a lonely spot in the hills. We see the car parked a ways out, so that’s confirmed. Dedushka is here, heading to John on his own. To do what? Tell him how wrong he is? Convince him to let Myka and Mom go?

  I just spent three days with him and I can’t believe he’d do that. He’s smart. He knows how these things work, all too well. So why would he give himself up?

  Jake thinks it’s because Dedushka hasn’t seen John since all of this happened. Since John disappeared two and a half years ago. He hasn’t witnessed the crazy firsthand. Maybe he really thinks he can talk sense into John?