A Perfect Darkness Read online

  Two men entered his room, which, with light green walls that had yellowed with age, resembled a hospital room. One man looked like the Devil, with bushy black hair, feathered eyebrows, and deep grooves that arced up from his thick moustache. The other was pudgy, maybe ten years younger than the Devil, and he very definitely did not want to be there. He pushed a cart ahead of him.

  From his angle on the table, where the bonds held him in place, Lucas couldn’t see what was on the cart, and his fear spiked. Surgical tools?

  “Time for your first assignment,” the Devil said. He dropped several folders on the cart.

  “What the hell are you going to have me do, strapped down like this?”

  The man’s smile sent a chill across Lucas’s skin. “I think you know. What were you doing while you slept just now? We could see your brain waves jumping all over the place. Not ordinary REM waves.”

  Lucas’s mouth tightened in a hard line.

  The Devil leaned against the cart. “Don’t try getting into our heads,” he said, nodding to the man with him. “We know how to block you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucas said, but his mind was spinning. What, exactly, did the Devil know?

  The Devil smiled. “Let’s get in sync, shall we?” He picked up a folder and extracted a newspaper clipping. “Paul Canyon, who was stalking his ex-wife and had a plan in place to stab her to death.” He handed the page to the other man, who tacked it to a bulletin board. “Andy Schmeckfeld, pedophile living next door to a nice family, found dead in his sleep. The girl told police Schmeckfeld promised to get a puppy that she could come over and play with.” He handed that one to the other man. “And finally, Stubin Gresto, domestic abuser, found dead in his sleep.” He gave a triumphant smile. “Each man asphyxiated without a mark on their neck or anything lodged in their throat. And, hey, I don’t give a rat’s ass about these scumbags. Good job, in fact. Now I have something bigger and better for you to put your skills to work.”

  He knew.

  Lucas couldn’t get his head around it.

  Nobody knew, not even Eric and Petra. It was his dark, dirty secret, nothing he’d meant to do. At least the first time. Nothing he was proud of. Still, he wasn’t going to fess up just yet. “How do you figure I had anything to do with them?”

  “We know what you are, Lucas. You’re a dreamweaver, like your mother.”

  His heart jumped at that. “My mother? How do you know my mother?”

  “We were business associates a long time ago. She could do amazing things, and you inherited her skills. You can enter other people’s dreams. You can manipulate them. And you can snuff them out while they sleep with no one the wiser for it. That’s a valuable skill.”

  “My mother killed people in their dreams?” The thought stunned him.

  The Devil continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “Unfortunately, Eric interfered before we could approach you about joining our team. And now it’s too late for voluntary service.”

  “If you think I’m going to help you—”

  “Robbins,” the Devil said, nodding toward the bulletin board. The other man pinned a picture of Amy on the wall.

  Lucas’s chest tightened and he struggled against the bonds. “Leave her the hell out of this.”

  “Only if you cooperate. We’ve seen those beautiful paintings of yours. If you want her kept out of this, you’ll help us achieve our goals.” With another nod to Robbins, a different picture went up. “See this man? He’s somewhere in the Washington, D.C., area, and he’s very dangerous. He’s coordinating a terrorist attack on the Pentagon. We want him to die in his sleep.”

  Rage poured through Lucas. They were using Amy. He was as angry at himself as he was at this son of a bitch giving him orders. He had involved her by going to her that night.

  Robbins spoke for the first time since he’d entered the room. “We’ve been preparing you for the sensory deprivation state that we found relieves the mind from having to filter out the ‘noise’ of sound and sight. It was probably a bit unnerving—”

  “It removes the need for you to be asleep to go into others’ dreams,” the Devil cut in, shooting Robbins a dismissive look. He turned back to Lucas. “Your nervous system is so starved for stimuli you’re more receptive to using your skills. As I think you’ve already discovered.”

  He hadn’t been asleep when he connected to Amy. His mind was so fried he hadn’t even realized it. “So I kill this guy. Then what?”

  “You’ll be given another assignment. And another.”

  “Until? Are you going to keep me here indefinitely?”

  Without a speck of emotion, the Devil said, “You won’t last that long.”

  The words jabbed him like swords, but he bit back his fear. “What are you injecting me with?”

  “We call it the Booster. It amplifies your skills.”

  “How? What’s in it?” When the Devil didn’t answer, Lucas said, “If you’re putting it into my body, I have a right to know what it is.”

  No one answered. Robbins walked over to the cart and lifted a syringe. Reluctance colored his features as he stepped toward the table.

  Lucas writhed, but he could hardly move. Frustration swamped him; he was helpless. Movement at the interior window caught his eye, and he saw a woman with long, straight, brown hair watching. Both men followed his gaze, and the Devil told Robbins, “Get her out of here.”

  Robbins went out and spoke to her. With one more glance in the room, she slowly moved away. He pulled heavy drapes over the window, blocking out all light from the hallway.

  “What did you do to Trevor Gladstone?” the Devil asked. “We haven’t heard from him in days.”

  “We left your spy at a warehouse. He was tied to a chair. Alive.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “You’d be proud. He said nothing, except how to log in to your system with a code we figured had let you know something was going on, since his laptop shut down.”

  The Devil’s eyes hardened even more. “Give it to him.”

  The substance in the syringe was milky blue. Robbins stepped up next to him. “It won’t hurt as much if you relax.”

  Lucas stared right at him as the needle slid into his vein. Robbins shifted his gaze to his task.

  The Devil watched, too. “That’s the second injection. Have you felt any heightening in your abilities?”

  “Tell me about my mother. What did she have to do with you?”

  The Devil smiled at the standoff. “You don’t know much about your mother, do you?”

  He knew very little. She’d been killed in a car accident when he was four, bereft over the fiery death of her friend, Eric and Petra’s mother…a death she’d witnessed. All he knew was that the two women were working in a lab for a company whose name he didn’t know. As his adoptive father said, all that was important was that the Company had paid on two big life insurance policies, put in trusts for them.

  The Devil said, “She was a talented woman, the most talented woman I have ever known.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “That’s all I can tell you. So? Any enhancement or change?”

  “No.”

  The Devil gave him a skeptical look. He glanced at Amy’s picture on the board, and then the man’s. “You have your assignment. You’ll hear a chime that will signal it’s time to go. When you’re done, you will be free to roam around this room.”

  Lucas narrowed his eyes. “And Amy will be safe?”

  “As long as she keeps her nose out of our business, and you cooperate…yes.”

  “She’ll stay out of it.”

  The Devil betrayed nothing as he looked at Lucas. “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

  The two men left and the lights went out. A soft static sound filled the air—white noise. He stared into the darkness, his eyes wide. His body became twitchy.

  The shapes began sometime later, triangles and blotches of color floating in the bla
ck. He imagined a red glow in the vicinity of the injection site, which still stung.

  What the hell were they putting into his body? The thought of it made him feel cold and clammy. Something he wouldn’t survive. He suspected he wouldn’t survive this, especially now that he knew why he was there. No way would they have him kill a few people and then let him go. At least he’d die before Amy. That had always been his biggest fear—that he’d experience her death.

  Now he had to keep her safe.

  He’d never been able to go into the dreams of someone who wasn’t somehow connected to him: a woman who’d come into the gallery, whose ex was out to kill her; the pedophile who ate at a restaurant he frequented. That man on the wall had no relevance to him. Panic licked at him. What if he couldn’t do it? He imagined the old Pac Man game and saw the yellow guy nibbling away at him.

  He had no concept of time. He might have been in the dark for minutes or hours. His mind began to spin, slowly, round and round. He tensed his body even though he knew he wasn’t physically moving. Images flashed before his eyes like a photographer’s flashbulb, one after the other: Amy, Eric, Petra, and then the faces of the men he’d killed. Now the target’s face. A man sleeping in his rumpled bed. Lucas floating above him. An ashtray on the nightstand, a glass with whiskey residue. Papers strewn everywhere, notes, floor plans. In the room, two other men and a woman, all asleep on the floor. The man in the bed, his face…the target.

  His skills had changed. No prior connection. No sketches that foretold the crime. Just an order to kill.

  The first time he killed someone, Paul Canyon, he brought the man’s fantasy into his dream, the plan to stab his ex-wife, the vivid details etched in his mind. He told Canyon, “You don’t want to kill her.”

  Canyon had shoved him out. Which pissed Lucas off. He dove back in, and the two fought. Lucas got his hands around the man’s throat and choked him. Canyon’s death in the dream thrust him awake in a cold sweat. He hoped he’d stopped Canyon’s fantasies. The next day a story in the paper about a man’s mysterious death stunned Lucas. The police found evidence of the man’s murderous intentions.

  He had killed Paul Canyon.

  He was as much a murderer as Canyon intended to be. Lucas beat himself up over that, even if he’d saved an innocent woman’s life.

  What he had to figure out was how he’d done it. He soon had his answer. The body experiences what dreamers dream. Their hearts race when they’re being chased. They cry when someone dies. They jerk when they fall. But their bodies are protected by the paralyzing that happens during REM. His own presence interfered with that protection, and the man experienced what happened in his dream.

  When Lucas got another vision of murder, he knew what he had to do. He would do it as many times as he had to. Kill to protect the innocent. Still, he wasn’t anyone’s hero.

  Now, he floated closer to the man, hovering over his face, and then sinking into his mind. The dream was murky, violent, reflecting what was saturating his mind: bombs, death.

  Lucas faced the dream image of the man who wished to kill many people in the name of his religion. He reached out with one hand, wrapped his fingers around the man’s throat, and squeezed.

  Gerard Darkwell watched the brain monitor from his office. “Lucas is spiking, like he was before we brought him out. I’d like to know what he was doing then.” He smiled. “But I know what he’s doing now.”

  Robbins was watching the video monitor that showed Lucas on the table. “Do you think he’s lying about his abilities being enhanced?”

  “Probably, but that’s not as important as the result.” Gerard let out a groan of pleasure. “What we could do with him. Too bad he’d never cooperate willingly. What I don’t know, and never will, is how much is him and how much the Booster.”

  “How many injections can he take?”

  “At the strength we’re giving, not more than four before he loses his mind. As powerful as he is, he’s also dangerous, especially since we don’t know exactly what he can do. So it’s better that he goes soon.” His smile returned. “But what he can do for us in the meantime…what they all could do for us. We’ve got to stop the Rogue Offspring before they contaminate any more of the Offspring we haven’t found yet. The Rogues are looking for them, trying to figure out the truth. They already know too much. They must be either captured or eliminated immediately. Eric and Petra Aruda are the most troublesome right now.”

  “What about Amy?” Robbins asked.

  “Right now she’s dangerously curious. Once Eric and Petra are out of the picture, she may be usable. Or she may have to be taken out, too, but only after Lucas is gone. I have a feeling he’d know.” Robbins had always perspired heavily when things got tense. Now the patch of bald scalp between his thinning hair shined with a layer of sweat. Gerard was glad he still had a head full of thick hair, thanks to his mother’s Romanian background. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in front of him. “What’s the matter? Don’t have the stomach for this anymore?”

  “I never did, not when we started lying to them. And giving them that stuff. You said it was all gone, destroyed by Wallace.”

  “It was.” He looked at Robbins. “You knew what you were getting into when you signed on this time.”

  Robbins’s eyes narrowed. “Like I had a choice. You yanked me out of the Directorate of Support.”

  Gerard glanced at the monitor again. “You’ve always been too soft. It’s time to toughen up.”

  The phone rang. It was headquarters—his boss. Gerard had no patience for the other aspects of his job now that DARK MATTER was coming together, but he answered anyway.

  “Darkwell, it’s Greely. I was expecting the report on the SALON project this morning. You’re not in your office, and from what your secretary says, haven’t been lately.”

  SALON was another research project on tactics, one that wasn’t nearly as interesting as DARK MATTER. His other line rang in. He noted the number; an important call. Reining in his impatience, he said, “I apologize for the delay, but we’ve had some personnel issues. I’ll get you the report by day’s end, sir.” He closed the call and took the other one.

  “It’s Samuels, sir. We found a body.”

  “Gladstone’s?”

  “Well…we think so. He’s been burned to a crisp. You can hardly tell it’s a body, much less whose body. But given the information and location, I’m guessing it’s him. We’ll have to take him back to the lab and run some identification tests.”

  “Let me know.” He hung up. “They found Gladstone.”

  “Dead?” Robbins asked, a squeak in his voice.

  “Very. We’re going to bring in the police. I want Eric Aruda now. He’s just become a wanted criminal…for arson.”

  “What about murder?”

  “We don’t need to muddy the waters. The police, and the press, will want to know who was killed. Gets complicated. Just arson. That’ll be enough to bring him in, and then we’ll take care of him from there. A lot of things can happen when you’re bringing in a criminal.”

  “He’ll be killed?”

  “He’s too dangerous to keep alive. The other Rogues will prove useful, though. They’ll be our guinea pigs. Test subjects without limits.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Amy had felt fear before. Usually it drove her inward, to her cocoon. The fear of losing Lucas drove her out. She couldn’t help herself; she peered from the side of the front window to spot her “company”: a black, generic car parked within sight of her apartment, a man sitting inside. No way could she get out of her apartment without Spy Guy seeing her. How Eric knew that, she didn’t want to contemplate.

  Pasting a bored expression on her face, she trotted downstairs with her laundry basket, forcing herself not to look at the black car. Her backpack was buried in the bottom of the basket. Too bad she couldn’t enjoy the summerlike day. Others were out by the pool or wandering the path that wound through the courtyard. She took that path directly
to the laundry building. She dumped her clothing into the washer, dropped in coins, and tucked the basket behind a chair.

  A man wearing dark shades and talking on his cell phone walked down the path. She assumed he was reporting her movement. How exciting was she, in her apartment for long periods of time, broken up with a trip out with her dirty clothes?

  This wasn’t the guy she’d confronted at the festival. This one blended in better, wearing khaki pants and a cotton button-down shirt, but she was sure he was one of them. He had a controlled glow, so tight to his body she couldn’t ascertain the color. He wasn’t an Offspring, though. What if he came into the Laundromat and hung out? He’d look mighty conspicuous without any laundry.

  She settled in a chair off to the side and grabbed a women’s magazine someone had left behind. What to do when you suspected your man was cheating. How to punch up your bra size in three easy steps. The magazine might as well have been in Swahili. She yawned as she flipped the pages. It was doubtful they’d actually buy that she was returning to her normal life—not after yesterday. Still, even someone sneaking around had to do laundry once in a while, right?

  Spy Guy continued down the path toward the recreation center, his head cocked at an angle to catch any movement should she leave through the front door. He was not much taller than she was, looking as far from some government agent as she could imagine. Which was the point, of course.

  She eyed the window way up high with an iron grill on it. Great. It should have a release button. Hopefully, the bathroom had a window, too, a much better place from which to escape. She walked into the small room. Damn, no window. She had an idea, though. She closed the door and turned on the water, annoyed at hearing Ozzie’s voice in her head chastising her about wasting water. She cracked the door and saw Spy Guy glance up when someone asked him a question. She exited, quietly closed the door, and ducked out of sight, hoping he’d think she was still tinkling.