Chapter 4

Thankfully, the explosions ceased once Donovan was well under. Von Rached set her on the exam table and dabbed at his lip, unsurprised when it came away bloody. He'd thought she was bad enough drugged; sobriety, it seemed, made her downright violent. How could so much anger be contained in such a small creature? Even when he'd only touched the surface of her mind, he felt it simmering in her subconscious.

She had a spot of his blood on her forehead, and he wiped it away with the pad of his thumb. He hadn't intended to start his first experiment on her yet, but it would probably be wisest to get it out of the way now. If he was ever to properly block off her telekinesis, he had to know just what he was dealing with.

He summoned Nurse Grieggs, who gave his split lip a startled look. "Take her to F wing," he said. "And when I am through with her, allow the patients into the common room. I want to see if they've learned to behave themselves."

She nodded, and went to fetch a gurney while he attended to his lip. This was the second time Donovan had drawn blood on him in as many days, and he didn't like that at all. Bad enough the inmates had seen him wounded once — they couldn't be allowed to see this. DaVries and Duncan would have to wait.

Unfortunately for Donovan, that meant she was his pet subject for the next few days. I cannot push her too far, either. Damn.

He left for F wing when Grieggs returned. Very few people were allowed in here, and fewer still knew what he did with all the peculiar machinery it held. Von Rached was a man who liked to conduct his true work in private.

The particular device he intended to use now had never been tried before. He'd built it on the off chance he should ever find another such as himself, and he was glad he had. It saved him the bother of trying to design something on the fly, and it had been a mildly entertaining method of wiling away a grey winter night some years ago.

It looked deceptively simple — a plain Formica table with a nylon head strap at one end. Two prongs holding wire-thin needles sat to either side, the steel bright in the glow of the overhead lights. No fluorescents in here; if he was going to spend an extended amount of time somewhere, he preferred the space be at least marginally appealing.

He loaded the still-unconscious Donovan onto the table, strapping her head in place and securing her arms in the table's padded restraints. Mindful of how hard she could kick, he tied her feet down, too. It was always possible she'd wake up in the middle of the procedure, and if she did she'd panic. Drugging her was out of the question just yet; he didn't want to risk tainting the results. On with the leads that would monitor her vitals, pulse and blood pressure and oxygen level: he needed to know how far this was physically pushing her as well.

Her hair was going to be a problem. He finally just let it hang off the end of the table, the ends brushing all the way to the floor. I really should just cut it off , he thought, but he didn't want to imagine the kind of tantrum she'd throw if he did. Half the hospital might not survive.

The point of this exercise was to determine what, if any, defenses she had. Von Rached could have used his telepathy, but he'd much rather observe from the outside, in his own controlled environment. Once he knew how much she could or could not do, he'd know how hard he could push her without causing actual damage. Then he could set about properly leashing her telekinesis, if not the telepathy. That would be a problem all on its own.

He took off his gloves again when he went to the instrument panel, turning the first dial. There were six of them, five controlling sensory input, the sixth essentially a telepathic hammer. They would have to see how that worked — or didn't, as the case may be.

A faint whirring filled the air, and no sooner had the needles pierced her temples than Donovan did wake.

"Don't move," he ordered, before she could even open her mouth. "So long as you remain still this will not harm you, but if you try to get up, I won't be responsible for what happens to you."

She swore, but for once in her life did as instructed. Her blood pressure was already elevated, her cardio-monitor beeping frantically, but for a former addict she was a remarkably healthy woman. She wasn't going to go and die on him for no reason.

The speed of her pulse ratcheted up a notch when he added auditory input — this was, he imagined, something like an acid-trip for her. At least it would seem marginally familiar, if in no good way.

Her hands twitched, and he glared at her. "Stop moving , you foolish woman."

"Focáil leat," she ground out, and he reflected that he really was going to have to study Irish Gaelic soon, if he was to deal with her on a regular basis. She'd gone pale as her smock, sweat beading her forehead, and when he added tactile hallucinations, she screamed. Ordinarily he founds his subjects' screaming vastly irritating, but there was something almost musical about hers, even if it threatened to split his eardrums.

He dialed that one down for now, leaving her to choke and wheeze. If he was fortunate, perhaps she'd pass out again. Already he'd decided she was much easier to deal with unconscious, if rather less entertaining.

Leaving the sensory stimuli as they were, Von Rached turned to the sixth dial, shifting it just a fraction. As he'd suspected, she was too busy reacting to her artificial hallucinations to notice its effects, so increment by slow increment he turned it up. Now was the time to add the drugs; hopefully they would shut her up.

No sooner had he gathered his assorted chemical cocktails, though, than she screamed again — a cry not of pain but of pure animal terror. He turned just in time for every light in the room to explode, right as Donovan ripped out all her restraints and half-fell, half-scrambled off the table.

The room plunged into darkness only for a moment before the yellow emergency lights kicked in. He raced over and grabbed her shoulders, at first thinking she might be having some kind of seizure, but no; her hands tore at the needles in her temples, both snapped clean from their moorings. Blood welled from the two small wounds, so dark it looked black in the dim light, and still she screamed, a note of unimaginable grief joining her fear. What had happened to her?

"Donovan," he said, prying her hands away from her temples and replacing them with his own. Her blood welled hot between his fingers, and he swore inwardly. "Donovan. Lorna, look at me."

To his relief she did, insofar as she was able, but it wasn't him she saw. Her wide blank eyes looked on some terrible inner hell, and her screams gave way to a low, agonized keening. She'd go insane at this rate, if he didn't do something.

He pressed his forehead to hers, diving into her mind with all the care he could summon. Chaotic though it was, he could at first find nothing that should draw such an extreme reaction from her —

He hit it without warning, as abruptly as though he'd slammed headlong into a wall in the dark. This, this had to be it, but how? He'd run up against a mental block so deep it was likely she wasn't even aware of it, a block so impenetrable he couldn't so much as dent it. All he could do was regard it in something perilously akin to shock, almost unwilling to believe in the thing's existence. There was simply no way she'd created the thing herself; it was far too old and well-established, embedded into the very bedrock of her psyche. Something possibly stronger even than he had placed it there, and what on Earth was he to make of that?

As gently as he could he disengaged his mind from hers, and found her still staring at some inner hell. Her keening had stopped, but she was rocking back and forth, silent tears mingling with smears of half-dried blood. It turned her face into something like a ghoulish mask, and he stared at her, for once unsure what to do. If he simply knocked her out in this state, she might well remain in it when she woke again. He wouldn't be able to do anything with her if she stayed this close to catatonic indefinitely.

"Sleep, Donovan," he said. He cast about for some pleasant image to force on her —he had to wipe this entire incident from her mind, though there was no knowing how much damage such a drastic excision might cause. It was surely better than the only alternative.

He skimmed a finger over her wounded temple, and took all that he dared. Whatever was left she would think of as nothing more than a nightmare. She doubtless had enough in this place as it was.

Sleep she did; all the tension drained from her in less than a minute, and now he could allow himself to be annoyed. That was an expensive machine she'd just annihilated, and who knew what she'd done to his other instruments. This woman might be more trouble than she's worth after all.

He lifted her and returned her to the table, ignoring the tangle of wire from her vital leads. She looked vulnerable in a way that seemed quite wrong for her; there was no fire in her now, and he wondered if this disaster had put it out permanently. Donovan might be irritating at best, but he found he didn't like the idea of diminishing her. She was aggravating, but she was a fighter, and if anything was going to break her, it should be something nobler than this. And it would preferably wait until he had performed more tests.

"I still don't know what to do with you, Donovan," he sighed. "Something has to give, and it will not be me."

~

Ratiri was incredibly surprised at how soon they were all allowed out of their rooms. After something like the previous night, he would have expected the whole place to be on lockdown for a week.

He didn't count it as a good sign, and neither did many others. Von Rached, they'd discovered, never did anything without a reason, and there was no way this was motivated by benevolence.

"He let us out, but he is not here. That is not comfort."

He looked at Katje, seated beside him on one of the rec room's long couches. Even she looked unsettled, and she had one of the best poker faces he'd ever seen — even the head of the oncology department at Great Ormond Street had nothing on her, and the junior doctors used to wonder if he was even capable of an actual human facial expression. (The residents did, too; they were just more circumspect about it.) She was a little too pale, and though she sat still enough, her hands kept twisting the hem of her smock.

"You're beginning to understand," he said, a little sadly. She'd only been here a few days, and until now, she'd outwardly adapted almost suspiciously well. She made connections left and right, was funny and flirty in equal measure, but her aura gave her away. Whatever her outward behavior, she didn't truly trust anyone — not even him. Ratiri found that surprisingly painful, if only because his patients had trusted him with their very lives, but he wasn't a doctor here. His credentials mattered not at all, and it was a fact he still struggled to accustom himself to. It was an odd thing to be hung up on, and yet it was probably better than succumbing to the despair that threatened every single inmate. What was it Daenerys Targaryan said? If I look back, I am lost.

If I look back, I am lost. Except I'm not sure it's possible to get more 'lost' than this desolate bit of nowhere.

"Shouldn't have to learn. It ain't right."

Ratiri leaned around Katje to look at the couch's other occupant, an older man who had been brought in the day before Lorna. "Nothing's right, here," he sighed. "This entire place is the epitome of wrong."

He glanced around at the rest of the inmates, most also huddled on various couches. The Institute's recreation room — this one, anyway; Ratiri was positive there had to be more — was a large place, the only room he'd yet found that wasn't stark beyond belief. They let the inmates paint and write on the walls, and the result was a hodgepodge of graffiti that made it literally look like the proverbial room full of crazy. The windows weren't as large as those in the cafeteria, but they were much better than the tiny things in the private rooms. They looked out on flat, harsh scrubland, low-growing tundra patched here and there with frozen puddles. Wherever they were, it was very far north: he was wagering either upper Canada or Alaska.

Ratiri turned back to Katje. "Katje, how did you get here?" he asked. "They didn't take you in Amsterdam, did they?"

She shook her head. "They catch me in the airport in Montreal, almost as soon as I was off the plane. And I really, really wish I knew how they know what I am." She hadn't even known what her Curse was when she'd boarded the plane — all she knew was that in Holland, mysterious men in suits were rounding up all who had suffered the fever, and three of her clients had pooled their funds to get her out of the country while the borders were still open.

"What about you?" he asked the man. On closer inspection, the old man wasn't actually old; he was perhaps in his late fifties, but so weathered and worn he looked seventy at least. He still had plenty of hair, a shaggy thatch of salt-and-pepper in desperate need of cutting, and surprisingly piercing, faded blue eyes.

"Seattle," he said. He rubbed his jaw, and Ratiri noted with mild horror that both his hands were twisted with old burn scars. They couldn't possibly have been properly treated when the injury happened — it was a wonder he had any use of his fingers at all.

Ratiri looked away, for he didn't want to ask. So far, everyone he'd talked to had been caught in either the States or Canada — it was probably safe to guess this place wasn't a global venture. All the staff sounded American to him, though for all he knew a few might be Canadian as well. His knowledge of both nations' accents was limited to what he saw on TV, and one utter wanker of a New York neurologist who'd lasted all of a month at Great Ormond Street. (According to one of the nurses, he'd gone to St. Bart's, and been booted out of there , too. Word was that he'd waxed too poetic about what he wanted to do to a patient's tits while scrubbing down for her surgery, and two thoroughly creeped-out nurses had reported it.)

Most of these 'orderlies', he was sure, weren't any kind of medical personnel. They moved more like soldiers, and seemed ill at ease in their scrubs. But even they weren't as bad as some of the staff — he was quite sure some of them were cursed themselves, and they were most definitely not on the inmates' side.

Doctor Hansen might be okay. Ratiri had only met him recently. He looked very young for a doctor, possibly just out of medical school, and he was so new Ratiri would bet he didn't know what was really going on here just yet. There was no darkness in his aura — no shadow marred the luminescent swirl of blue and green. They were colors, Ratiri had found, that were common to doctors and scientist-types.

Katje broke his reverie. "The little explosion woman was put in my room last night," she said, "but they come and get her again this morning. She seem okay, though very…" she mimed jabbing a needle into her arm.

"Drugged?" he offered.

"Yes. I think she will not disappear forever like the others."

He wasn't surprised Von Rached hadn't killed her — not if her curse was as similar to his as it appeared. What was unexpected was that she'd been put with another inmate at all, however briefly, and that it was an inmate she'd spoken to.

"I see circles in your head spin," Katje said. "What are you think?"

"I'm not sure how safe it is to say." I should be glad Lorna's unintentional outburst might provide a shade of hope — that it had demonstrated that, terrifying or no, Von Rached was human — but I'm really not. In the short amount of time he'd spoken with her, he didn't think she'd be able to handle having that level of focus put on her, and he didn't want her to have to try.

God only knew what Von Rached was doing to her; she was too valuable to be physically harmed, but the doctor had made it abundantly clear he didn't need to touch someone to hurt them. If his curse was truly like hers — if he was a telepath as well as a telekinetic — it would explain a lot, and not in a good way.

The not-really-old man snorted. "Probably not safe to even think in here."

Ratiri leaned around Katje again. "Why would you say that?" This bloke hadn't been anywhere near Lorna — hadn't even been in the cafeteria — so surely he hadn't heard her mention her telepathy.

"I see things. I think the word's precognition or something. Done it for years, but it's damn near useless 'cause I can't control it. Makes me forget shit, too; hell, I don't even know my own name. Gone by Geezer as far back as I can remember."

Suddenly, Ratiri's own curse didn't seem so bad at all. "Nice to meet you, Geezer," he said. "I'm Ratiri, and this is Katje. Does anyone else know what it is you do?" Heaven help him whenever he comes to Von Rached's attention. Especially if he was actually born like this. While he didn't actually know whether Von Rached had been born with his ability or not, odds very strongly favored it. He was too confident, and too skilled, to have woken up with it within the last six months.

Geezer snorted again. "Somebody does, or I wouldn't be here. They've gotta have some of us working for 'em."

"Kapo," Katje said.

"Huh?" Geezer asked.

"Kapo," she repeated, and paused, apparently searching for the English to explain. "In Second World War, the camps would sometimes let prisoners work with guards. They call them Kapo, and my grandmother say they could be worse than SS."

Katje looked awfully young to have had a grandparent who'd survived a concentration camp, Ratiri thought. He wasn't sure how old she actually was, but he'd wager early twenties. "She told you that?"

"She did. And I think maybe we go that way again. You think it is bad in America — in Holland, they took away all who had the fever, even if we showed no magic. Is why I ran away."

"Jesus," Geezer muttered. "Dunno, though — maybe it ain't as bad there." He did not sound remotely convinced.

"Lullepraat," she retorted. "I think it translate as 'bullshit'. There are always ways to — I think you say work the system. You just must know how."

She seemed to be doing that already, Ratiri mused. There didn't seem to be anything calculated in the way she made friends here, but it definitely wasn't hurting her any. She was flirty by nature, and even without make-up she was gorgeous, but it was more than that. There was just something eminently likeable about Katje, even if he was convinced a lot more went on in that blonde head than she ever let on. He wasn't about to give her away; if she preferred to let most people think she was shallow, that was her business. Being underestimated probably had its advantages.

It wasn't something he'd ever get away with. His very height made him noticeable, and growing up in rural Scotland, his race had, too. His father had worked in India as a young doctor, and brought an Indian wife home with him. Ratiri was their only child, born in Scotland a few years into their marriage, and though he'd never been bullied, he'd often been whispered about. Blending in had never been an option, and it still wasn't. And this was not a place where you wanted to stand out.

So far, he'd been lucky enough to escape all but perfunctory notice, but that wouldn't last forever. His curse was neither drastic nor flashy; he saw auras, and to an extent he could manipulate them, but it wasn't like Katje's or Geezer's or Lorna's. It was a quiet curse, and it might not have got him caught if he hadn't been desperate enough to use it. When he ran out of money in Canada, he'd started tweaking the auras of cashiers, willing them to believe random scraps of paper were actual bills. Though he never did it at the same store twice, somebody noticed.

In theory he could use it to trick his way out of here, but where would he go? He hadn't been kidding when he told Lorna they were in the middle of nowhere. From everything he'd gathered, the Institute wasn't even accessible by road; everything was brought in by air. Getting out could probably be done, if he felt like freezing or starving in the wilderness. Whoever had built this place had probably been advised by Von Rached, who knew what he was doing, even if no one else did.

Home's no option, either. While Ratiri could not truthfully say he missed London, he missed the hospital. He missed his colleagues (well, some of them), and his patients, and his elderly neighbor, who looked after his houseplants on the rare occasion he took a holiday. There was no safety in England, though — fever-patients had been taken away from hospital even during the days of his recovery.

Scotland, that had been a brief consideration — land of his birth, wilder, colder, and greener. The call to home was a powerful one, but he had no one there now. It was just...another place. He had no living family there, and he'd lost touch with his school friends years before. While he likely did have living family in India, his mother had grown estranged from them when she married his father. Ratiri didn't even know what her maiden name had been.

No, he'd run to Canada because Canada was both huge and comparatively lightly populated, and thus had more room, in theory, to hide. Even if you were a giant.

His ruminations were interrupted by a sudden jag of pain, white-hot agony that stabbed through his brain lightning-fast. It was gone within moments, but the inexplicable horror that accompanied it lingered. It was so sharp and so terrible that for a moment he stopped breathing, and came dangerously close to passing out entirely.

Worry rose in Katje's eyes. "What?" she asked, but he couldn't answer. The pain came again, worse this time, searing through his nerves like brushfire. It was so intense it sent his vision grey, and before he knew what had happened he'd collapsed off the couch, landing hard on the unforgiving tile. Its chill made such a horrible counterpoint to the heat of his anguish that consciousness all but gave up again, leaving him almost unaware of his surroundings.

He had no idea how long it lasted, but it seemed an eternity before a merciful, dizzying dose of Dilaudid coursed through his system, rushing chill through his veins. The drug rendered him pleasantly numb within minutes, though it made his head spin so badly he shut his eyes. Someone had put him on a gurney, and he vaguely heard Hansen's voice.

" —no idea," he was saying. "I want to run some bloodwork. You're sure nobody gave him a sedative this morning?"

" Yes , Doctor." Nurse Grieggs, highly exasperated. "And he ate the same food as everyone else. I'd better tell Doctor von Rached."

Panic seized Ratiri, but Hansen said, "Let's not bother him until the bloodwork's done. Might be best to rule some things out first."

Thank you, Hansen , Ratiri thought. He was even more relieved when he opened his eyes a fraction and saw Grieggs stomp out. Her aura might not be as bad as Von Rached's, but it was bad enough; there was a deep, oxblood caste to it that reminded him unpleasantly of a new scab.

"Hang in there, Ratiri," Hansen said. "We'll figure this out."

I was afraid of that , Ratiri thought, and once again lost awareness of everything around him.

He was hovering in a nebulous dream-state when he realized he wasn't alone. Some completely alien presence was lurking in his mind, but it wasn't nearly malevolent enough to be Von Rached. Angry, yes, but also confused and hurt — pain tinged with a grief so palpable it nearly stole his breath.

Who's there? he asked.

Me. Where's here?

The thought sounded like a voice he recognized, one he'd thought he'd never hear again. My head, I think. Lorna?

Unfortunately — kind'v wish I wasn't me right now. This Ratiri I'm talking to?

It is. Where are you?

Aside from your head? I haven't got a fucking clue, and I don't want one. I don't even know how I got here. Or how to get out. Sorry.

Don't worry about it. If this was a dream, he could do much worse. And he wasn't quite prepared to admit to himself that it could be anything else. Lorna seemed like a decent woman, but he didn't actually know her; the thought of her being actively within his mind was something he just wasn't ready to confront.

I can pretend I'm not here, if you'd like, she said, and there was an unnerving sorrow in her mental voice, that all but dashed his dream theory. His own mind would never assign her something so melancholy.

No, it's all right. This is just…

Bloody odd? she finished. Tell me about it. All things considered, I'd rather be in your head than mine right now. I don't know what Von Arsehole did to me, but…

She trailed off, and he didn't ask her to finish the thought. It was probably better she not remember.

Stay, he said. It's better to not be alone here. He meant more than just his mind. Isolation in this hellhole could drive a person truly mad. Bizarre as this was, it felt much better than being on his own.

~

Seated at Donovan's bedside, Von Rached arched an eyebrow. Wasn't this interesting. He'd suspected her uncontrolled telepathy would try to find an anchor, but he hadn't expected her to succeed. Duncan must be even more stable than I thought, if he could handle that.

It made him all the more promising. It was somewhat unfortunate he was the one Donovan had latched onto, considering Von Rached's plans for the man, but that could be worked with.

We have time . He'd been given carte blanche permission to do as he wished, and he did not intend to hurry. Haste made one sloppy, and sloppiness was unforgivable.

Donovan slept on, and he regarded her with open curiosity. Her words of their first meeting intrigued him — never had he heard anyone say that wanting things was stupid, because you weren't going to get them. There had been something rote in the way she said the phrase, as though she repeated it so often it was burned into her brain.

Von Rached's own wants were few, but at least he had them. He wanted to know everything — he thirsted for knowledge like a man lost in a desert.

He could, of course, dig through Donovan's mind until he found the source of that strange belief, but he did not want to — not yet. It would be far more interesting to draw it from her gradually, because while curiosity was all well and good, he was not a man who rushed. Ever.