The Dark at the End Read online

  He smiles again. “We have a deal.”

  7

  JAKE

  Back in the Saddle by Aerosmith

  Smith leaves me to sit for a while, while he “prepares a fun treat” for me. I don’t have the handcuffs on anymore, but Mr. Super Big still stands behind the sofa, ready to lean on me if I try anything. I realize he has the exact same suit as the guy in the park: navy with brass buttons, a blue and white striped shirt, and a pale blue tie. Their uniform, I guess.

  I wonder if it would accomplish anything to try to attack this guy while he’s alone, to choke his thick neck until he tells me where Smith is holding Mom and Myka. But even if I could, he has a gun too—I saw a flash of it under his coat. It doesn’t usually work out well to go me vs. a big man with a gun. Or even a big man with a needle.

  He’s humming, low in his throat. It takes me a while to figure out even what the sound is. I can’t tell what song it is. I don’t think he knows he’s doing it.

  I sit there like a good dog and stare out the window. It’s getting dark, showing the lights of the District and the Washington Monument, glowing white and tall in the distance. It’s almost home—but I don’t have a home anymore. I gave that up when I went underground with Liesel. I was getting used to that van being home, sleeping in a jigsaw puzzle of sleeping bags, Myka on one side and Rachel on the other.

  I close my eyes, wishing I had the power to time travel to yesterday morning. Or to find a portkey to the house in Virginia, grab Myka’s old stuffed animal Horse, or something else of hers so I could tunnel to her. Is she in this building? Or somewhere else entirely?

  Or Dedushka. I can at least tunnel to him—only him—without an object. But I can’t do it now, with someone watching. I can’t let Smith know I can do that, or it will make everything worse. He’d never let me be alone.

  “All right, my pet.” Smith charges into the room. “Time to do a little test. See what you can get out of this.” He opens a glass box in his hand, pulls something out, and places it in my palm. It’s a keepsake coin, with John F. Kennedy on the front. It’s cool to the touch. The air conditioning in here is cranked up high. He folds his arms. “Impress me.”

  Tunneling under pressure again, just like when the government held me, almost like I never stopped. Here we go. I rub the face of the coin with my thumb, close my eyes, and let myself go. I say what I see aloud, because I know he won’t accept anything else. The familiar tingling, the warmth, starts at my fingertips, then sweeps up my body in a rush. Then I see the owner of the object. I’m there with him. I can see what he’s seeing, feel what he’s feeling.

  It’s a man, black, head shaved shiny, in army green. An officer, specialty Electronic Warfare. He’s in the Pentagon, office 3C710. He’s working, the fluorescent lights flickering above him. He taps at his computer, references a folder splayed out in front of him, taps again. He’s worried. This isn’t good, and the General isn’t going to be happy. But there’s no other way to spin it. We’re vulnerable, and they’re close to figuring it out.

  I pull out of it, wiped. It’s been a while since I’ve done that to a stranger. I’ve tunneled to Dad a few times since we left the base, just to see where he was, but never got anything useful. And now Smith has me outright spying, on the Pentagon of all places. Who’s he going to sell that info to?

  I reach out to give the coin back to Smith.

  He leaves his arms folded, eyebrows down. “Why did you stop? Did I tell you to?”

  I frown. “I have to come out when I do. I can get stuck, otherwise.”

  He just looks at me.

  “It’s nothing you can tell me or not tell me,” I say, annoyed. “I come out when I have to.”

  “That’s not the way it’s going to work with me,” he snaps. “Half-seen thoughts won’t cut it, Mr. Lukin. You stay until you see something useful, until I tell you you’re done. Come out too soon, you go back in.” He jerks his chin at the coin, still in my fingers. “Go on. See what’s in the folder, or on the screen.”

  “But I can’t—“

  Mr. Super Big’s hands lower onto my shoulders. Not pushing, just resting. For now. “Go!” Smith bellows.

  I go back in.

  He stops typing, staring at the screen with his chin in his hand. VULNERABILITY OF U.S. DEFENSE SYSTEMS TO ELECTRONIC ATTACK, it says. ‘After a long and complete study, the task force has determined that U.S. Defense systems are not well protected against the type of attack we have seen recently from the Chinese on private targets. The task force believes they are practicing infiltration methods, and will attack defense systems soon. The task force believes they will succeed, unless…’ The cursor blinks at him, mocking. “Unless what?” he says to his empty office. “You gotta give ’em a solution.” But he sits and stares, and the cursor still blinks.

  I’m sticking, feeling claustrophobic in this guy’s skin, and I don’t want to stay anymore. I come out, open my eyes defiantly at Smith. He stares at me, unblinking.

  “Better,” he says. “But that one doesn’t get you a gold star.”

  I shake my head. “You’re spying. Actual spying on government weaknesses.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “No, I’m not. You are.”

  I shake my head. “Are you going to sell that info to someone? Leave us open to attack?”

  Smith stares at me, his head just a little tilted. “Jones, take him to his room.”

  “His name is Jones?” I ask, so frustrated I can’t even stop myself. “Smith and Jones? Could you come up with some more original aliases maybe?”

  Smith slams his hand on the table, so loud I jump. He pauses, for a long second. “Do you WANT me to kill you?” he whispers. “Are you asking for it? Or do you want me to kill your precious little sister instead?”

  I grab the edge of the sofa, in instant full panic mode.

  “Respect,” he whispers. “It’s all I ask. No, I suppose I ask rather a lot, actually.” Then he laughs, a little giggle.

  Right. He’s totally insane. I’d almost forgotten that.

  There’s a headache forcing itself into my head. Shit. It’s my side effect. It doesn’t happen every time, but when it does it knocks me flat.

  I press my hand against my forehead, trying to brace myself for the brain-splitting pain. Though nothing works for it, not anymore. Liesel used to give me an experimental drug, T-680, which stopped them cold (and made me high). But the side effects of that, long-term, were far worse. Hallucinations. Then insanity.

  “Headache,” I say, my voice choked. Here it comes, the giant hammer smashing, eclipsing everything else. I scream, my throat raw.

  A hand opens my mouth, and I taste the familiar Froot Loops flavor of T-680. No. It can’t be. I try to spit it out, try to struggle, but the hand holds my jaw shut, and I swallow. The headache dissolves at the edges, gone within two minutes.

  Damn, that drug. I forget where I am, smile, and fall asleep.

  8

  RACHEL

  Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song) by The Treniers

  I watch the water roll down the side of the Coke glass, expanding the puddle it’s sitting in. It makes me more angry. Why is it so irrationally hot?

  Why did Jake abandon us? Abandon me. And to see him taken like that, drugged and dragged off like a puppet. I want to smash my drink, feel the satisfaction of being the one to do something for once. I can’t believe he’d give himself up like that. On purpose. “We can’t just leave him with Mr. Smith,” I say, to Dedushka.

  We’re sitting at a cafe, trying to eat lunch. There’s a plate of uneaten fries in front of me. The fried smell of them, so good when they came, is making me feel nauseous.

  Dedushka looks at me sharply. “It is done. And it is for Myka, you see, and his mother. He cannot think of anything else, until he does all he can to get both of them back.”

  I swallow, tears pricking the back of my throat. Little Myka. I’ve only known her for a week, but if I let myself think of it, her with Mr. Smith…I can s
ee why Jake would do crazy things to stop it.

  I can also see that Jake is gone again. Like the months I thought he was dead, when he was really locked in a government prison. Only who knows what Mr. Smith will do with him. Mr. Smith’s face is in my nightmares still, staring down at me. He’s crazy. Last time all he wanted was to get Jake to give him enough information so that Smith could make a quick sale. What if he wants more this time?

  “You shouldn’t have let him do it,” I say. “You have better sense. You should’ve known it wasn’t going to be a trade like Jake thought. That they’d trick him.”

  “Perhaps,” Dedushka says, his voice as gentle as it gets, “it is time for you to go home.”

  I jerk, knocking the almost-empty glass into my lap, ice sliding all over my bare legs. I bolt to my feet and push the sticky ice off, wiping at my legs. Dedushka waits, gaze fixed on the table. He’s nothing if not patient. He’s the only one of us.

  “Why would you say that?” I sit, gingerly, on the chair. “Because I think you did something wrong?”

  Dedushka’s eyes—the same as Jake’s, which is weird sometimes—look steadily into mine. “You came to help him find his father. You did that. You saved him. You stayed with him until he was united again with his family. It is more than was expected.” He waves a hand. “But now it is different. He is gone. Perhaps now is the time to go back to your mother, prepare for college. It would be safe for you.”

  “It’s safe for me?” I laugh, without any humor in it at all. “You realize that if I’d stayed in the van, which I almost did, I’d be with Mr. Smith too? That he—and maybe John too, or Liesel, I don’t know, all these lunatics—would be perfectly happy to use me as bait, if they thought it would bring Jake to them? How am I safe?”

  I hadn’t even realized that, consciously, but it’s true. Even if I’m not with Jake, I’m not safe anymore. Because of choices I made. One choice, really.

  When I think back to that moment in the library, when I saw Jake was alive and confronted him, I wonder if I would make that choice again. Knowing everything I know now, everything I’ve seen, would I stop him? Or would I let him walk right by?

  That poor old man, dead in his bed. That was yesterday. And Jake crumpling to the ground, unconscious. I’m in a world now where people are killed, drugged, used mercilessly.

  But If I’d let him go past in the library, I’d still be working my summer job, mourning my dad leaving us, and trying to deal with my mom’s oppressive craziness. She was getting bad before I left, screaming at me about everything I did. So much worse since Dad left. She’d yell at how I loaded the dishwasher. How I folded the towels. How I was wasting my life staring at my phone. A hundred times a day she’d yell “RACHEL!” at the top of her lungs, scream for me to get my butt over there so she could explain in detail what I did wrong. Or drink a whole bottle of wine, and cry.

  I hated every second in that house. It would’ve been miserable trying to ride it out until I could get away and go to college. Safe…maybe…but absolutely miserable.

  And without me, Jake would probably be trapped with his dad right now. I was the one who got us out of that, away from John. Alone, I don’t know how he would’ve managed it.

  I think of kissing Jake, the flood of emotion between us. The way I feel awake when I’m with him. The way my pulse thumps every time we touch. It’s just starting, whatever this is between us. We’ve only kissed a few times. But it’s something, a connection I’ve never experienced before.

  I can’t go back. Not now. Not yet.

  I meet Dedushka’s so-calm eyes. “I can’t go back to my mother, back to ‘normal.’ Knowing he’s out there, with Mr. Smith…how could I? Just pick up my toys and go home, and never know? Never see him again?” I shake my head. “I said I could, but not after seeing him taken like that. We have to find the serum. It’s the only way it’ll end, the only way any of us will be safe. And then I will go back to normal, as normal as I can…and Jake can too.”

  Dedushka’s thick eyebrows rise, which means he’s listening to me. I think. He doesn’t say anything, so I keep going.

  “We’re close, right? Maybe. We think Vladimir pointed us to the stadium. So if Jake’s gone, for now, then you and I need to keep working to find it. We find it, and then we bring it to him, wherever he is, and get him out of there. And then all of this stops for real. Okay?”

  Dedushka smiles, and sets his hand on top of mine. “It is well done, milaya.”

  I tilt my head. I get the feeling that’s what he wanted me to say all along. “Were you playing me, Dedushka? Did you really want me to stay?”

  He shrugs one of his big Russian shrugs, and smiles a little through his beard.

  “Tricky. What does ‘milaya’ mean?” I ask.

  “You.” He stands, brushing off his pants. “Shall we go find a vehicle? It is too hot for an old man to walk in the sun, and the streets are too wide and too long here. Then we will go to this stadium, see what we see.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I feel better doing something, anyway. We’re not helpless. Dedushka and I will find the serum that Vladimir left, and we’ll hook up with Jake again—and then we’ll make it all stop. Then Mr. Smith, and the rest of them, will have no reason to keep Abby and Myka. To try to grab me, or Jake, or anyone.

  The thought crosses my mind that we still know an awful lot, about government secrets. Will they really let us walk away? Will I be able to go to Berkeley in the fall, like I’m supposed to?

  Well. It’s a plan. Far better to have Jake with no power at all, and give us a chance.

  *

  It only takes five minutes for Dedushka to convince the stadium manager to let us see Vladimir’s locker, saying he’s ill and he wanted his things. There’s something about Dedushka when he turns on the accent full-bore, a charm that’s hard to resist. It’s easier for people to just give in and agree to him. I’d say that’s his gift, that and hiding out successfully, but Jake said he used to have another power. A darker one. If he heard a dead person’s voice, on TV or the radio or whatever, he would experience the last moments of their life.

  I think that’s a terrible power. But he and his wife made this serum, with Vladimir’s help, and they stopped the power completely. The magic, remote serum. Dedushka says there’s only one bottle of it left. The holy grail for us.

  We walk through a maze of hallways, following the manager. Everything is well-lit, cream paint and spotless, even in the tunnels. It smells stale, but still clean. Newish.

  ‘Tunnels’ just makes me think of Jake again. Where is he right now? What is he doing? If I had an ability like his I’d be able to find out. But Abby and I are the only ones without some kind of power, if you count Myka’s super-brain. Myka joked that I’m like Lois Lane, the normal mortal. Except Jake doesn’t have to go around rescuing me. Thank God.

  Maybe more like Xander in Buffy. At least he was helpful, most of the time.

  The hallway gets darker, smaller and less fancy, and finally we’re at Vladimir’s locker, in a row of about 20 others. The manager reads the combination from a little piece of paper, opens the locker, and steps back.

  I’m half-afraid it will explode or something, that it was a false clue for the bad guys and he rigged it with a bomb. But Dedushka steps forward and looks, and I guess it’s okay. I peek over his shoulder.

  There’s a light jacket hanging on a hook, and a pair of cleats. That’s all. My eyes fill at the sadness of it, these two lonely items. That’s all that’s left of a whole life.

  “Thank you,” Dedushka says, like it’s exactly what he expected. He hands the jacket to me—a pale blue windbreaker, so old man—and takes the cleats himself. “He will be glad to have these.”

  I swallow hard, try to blink away the vision of Vladimir’s body. No. He won’t.

  I check again, but the locker is definitely empty now. No secret panels or a hidden shelf or anything dramatic. It’s a dead end. Clothes from a dead man. We have no idea where to
look now. We get to sit back and worry until we hear from Jake. Or I go home, alone.

  The manager offers to show us the field since we’re here, and Dedushka enthusiastically accepts. I follow along, half-hearted, the jacket folded over my arm. I never liked baseball much, though Dad was into it for a while. I like volleyball, which I played until sophomore year. And football. If this was the Dolphin’s stadium it would be much more interesting.

  The clouds are low and dark, even though it’s almost 90 degrees. The air sparks with electricity, and the field looks strange in the light: wide and otherworldly. It’s going to rain, soon.

  “Of course today wouldn’t be a great day for baseball,” the manager says, with a grin. He has yellow teeth, and eyes with lines radiating around them. His gray hair is pulled back into a ponytail. He seems happy to have a chance to talk to someone. “But Vladimir would’ve been here anyway. Every day, that guy, cleaning the stadium, sometimes even when he was scheduled off. I’m sorry to hear he’s not well. I hope he’ll be back soon?”

  Dedushka makes an affirmative noise. I hold the jacket close. It smells faintly of peanut butter. I gag, thinking of him still lying there in his house. He’ll probably be found soon. We did this just in time. There’ll be police crawling all over Vladimir’s little house. But I can’t think of that, or I’ll lose it.

  It’s then I feel something in the jacket. Not in the pocket, but in the lining. The crinkle of paper.

  “May I use the bathroom?” I ask, too loud. The manager looks surprised for a second, then nods and points around the corner. Dedushka narrows his eyes at me, and I smile, bright and fake, and hurry away. I guess I should get better at the subtle spy tricks, but it worked.

  I bundle into a stall in the bathroom, lock the door, and examine the jacket. Sure enough, the pockets are empty, but there’s something hidden inside the back. I can see tiny, neat stitches around a long slit in the liner.

  Oh my God. There really is a secret pocket.