Page 90 of The Night Island

“Wait. He may pull out of it. We can’t afford another failure. He’s worth a fucking fortune.”

“Only if he’s a success. If he does survive there will be a high probability of insanity. The client is paying for a psychically enhanced assassin, not a monster with a lethal talent.”

“We can’t be sure the subject will be insane if he survives. If he is we can terminate later.”

“He’s a failure. I’ll take care of this.”

“What the fuck? Stop—”

The screams start then.

He sits up on the gurney and discovers that he is in a small room lit by a blue radiance that emanates from the floor, ceiling, and walls. He iswearing his trousers but his shirt is gone. There is a needle in the crook of his arm. It is attached to a line that is connected to a bag of fluid hanging from an IV pole. He yanks the needle out and gets to his feet.

The room floats around him. It takes him several seconds to find his balance. When he does, he searches for an object that can be used as a weapon. The screams have stopped, but that is not reassuring.

He sees a tray of medical equipment near the gurney and selects a scalpel. He lurches across the small space, opens the door, and looks into a large laboratory lit with the same blue light.

There are two men in white lab coats sprawled on the floor. Their throats have been slashed. There is a horrifying amount of blood. Bloody footprints lead to the door on the far side of the lab. A mass of luminous plants can be seen through the opening...

“Luke, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

Talia’s calm, quiet voice brought him to the surface on a surge of energy. She did not sound alarmed, just concerned. He opened his eyes and saw her shadowed face looking down at him. His talisman. A sense of wonder whispered through him. He reached up and touched her cheek.

She caught his hand in her own and squeezed it gently. “A nightmare?”

“Yes, sorry,” he said. He levered himself up to a sitting position, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and tried to push the dream fragments out of his head. “I was back in that damned lab.”

Talia sat up beside him. “Was there anything different about the dream this time?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “More details. How did you know?”

“I didn’t. But things have changed since your last nightmare. It’s not surprising that the experience of returning to Night Island hasbrought back some more memories and influenced your dreamscape.”

“Yes,” he said.

He summoned up the scenes from the latest version of the nightmare. A sense of certainty hit him like a splash of ice water. “I know where I got the scalpel. It was on a tray in the room where I woke up. I heard two men talking about having to terminate Subject A. Then I heard the screams. I figured I might need a weapon.”

“You grabbed the scalpel.” Talia watched him intently. “A perfectly reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. Go on.”

“I opened the door and looked into the lab. I saw the two bodies on the floor and the blood. So much blood. Someone had walked through the blood.”

“Barefoot?”

“Good question.” He concentrated. “No. Shoe or boot prints, I think, but they were badly smeared.”

“You saw the killer’s footprints.”

“Yes. They led to the door of the lab and disappeared into the gardens. I knew I had to get out of the lab, so I followed the footprints to the door. I saw the path through the gardens and followed it.”

“So there you have it,” Talia said. “You were not the one who murdered those two men in the lab. Pomona Finch told us the other test subject was considered a success. Subject B is the killer.”

“But we’re back to the same question I brought up in the beginning. If Subject B has a lethal psychic talent, why not use it to commit the murders in the lab?”

“For the same reason you suggested when we talked about this on Night Island. Subject B had probably just awakened and was still in a foggy state. You said you didn’t know what you could do withyour enhanced talent until after you escaped the lab. Subject B would have been in a similar situation.”

Luke thought about it and shook his head. “Something doesn’t add up. If B was a success and not being threatened, why murder the two researchers?”

“The hallucinations were probably a factor. Subject B wasn’t thinking clearly.”

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