[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
She'd started studying the mind then, reading the classics in the field. The brain was a biological machine.
It could be reprogrammed with the right tools.
She'd grown up at the tail end of the period that considered drugs recreational, and for a while she'd
thought that was the answer the right chemical cocktail could do what she wanted and needed it to,
unlock the hidden powers of her mind and make them available. A few semesters at the community
college had given her the rest of the tools she needed to pursue what she thought of as her Research, and
as soon as she had the basic tools for her quest, she'd dropped out. She already knew that legitimate
research wouldn't divulge what she sought. For one thing, it frowned on human experimentation.
And she had experimented first on herself, then on others a combination of loneliness and rage
pushing her down the easy road from science geek to outlaw chemist. Bills had to be paid, and research
took money. But she knew the answer was there, somewhere. If she only had the courage and the
discipline to find it.
The answer was in the hallucinogens. She'd always known that, from the first time she'd dropped
acid. But LSD alone wasn't enough. It was too diffuse, too variable, too soft. She'd added mescaline,
crystal meth, cocaine, trying to come up with the right cocktail that would let her push through all the
barriers and claim the lightning for her own. She'd known she was on the right track, but every time she
had a compound she was ready to try, it failed somewhere along the way. Sometimes people died, but
she hadn't cared. She worked frantically, desperately, knowing her time was running out, because life on
the street just wasn't safe, and when you were supplying illegal drugs, the working conditions and your
co-workers left a lot to be desired. Sooner or later somebody would sell her out, and she'd go down.
But in her own strange way, Jeanette was heroic. Inevitable arrest and imprisonment didn't faze her.
Finding the key was all that mattered.
Then Robert Lintel came, and that changed everything.
* * *
She'd been in the back room of a garage somewhere in New Jersey, cooking up a batch of
methamphetamine in a makeshift kitchen. She'd had to move three times in the past month because of the
Feds, and the last time she'd lost her whole lab. If the Sinner Saints the bikers who were her protection
and distribution network hadn't tipped her off, she would have lost more than her lab, but her product
was pure and consistent, and they knew that if she went down she'd sell out as many of them as she
could.
Won't live to see thirty if I do, but I don't think that matters, do you, Jeannie?
Of course, they might kill her themselves to keep that from happening. Even without the psychic
powers she coveted, Jeanette could tell that. She could almost hear Road Hog thinking that, when he set
her up out here in the middle of nowhere. But the Saints were greedy, and already had a deal in place for
this current batch. She was safe at least until it was done, and maybe longer if the heat died down.
When the door of the garage opened, she looked up, irritated, thinking it was Road Hog or Hooker
coming back to chivvy her along. But it was someone she'd never seen before, a well-manicured man in
an expensive dark grey suit, walking in like he owned the place.
Her hand had crept toward the gun in her knapsack people in her profession always went
armed but she hesitated for a crucial second, because the room was full of acetone and ether and the
muzzle flash from a shot would send the whole lab up like the Fourth of July.
And he'd smiled at her, like there was something that he wanted. Her hand closed over the gun, and
she pulled it into her lap, behind the desk where he couldn't see, but she didn't fire.
"Jeanette Campbell? Hi. My name is Robert Lintel. I've got a business proposition for you."
With those inane words he'd changed her life. So that now she could look in a mirror, and not flinch
quite so hard.
* * *
The lights in her office flared to full merciless brightness, and Jeanette blinked and squinted up at the
figure in the doorway, laying her guitar aside.
"Hey, Campbell. What are you doing sitting here in the dark?"
There was an edge to Robert's voice, but there always was. He'd rescued her years ago, but it was
for reasons even more selfish than her own, if that were possible.
While she wanted the powers that were hers by right and god help anyone who stood in her way
once she had them Robert wanted Ultimate Power. She wanted the power for herself, Robert wanted
to control the powerful people. He saw himself in charge of a group of perfect psychic spies, assassins,
and saboteurs, whose work was undetectable... and whose skills were for sale to the highest bidder,
though he never said that.
He didn't have to. Jeanette, better than anyone else, knew how his mind worked. Hadn't he sought
her out back there in Jersey because he'd gotten to see the research notes she'd left behind in the lab the
Feds had seized, and knew she could be a means to his ends?
Just so.
There was no love lost between predators.
"Thinking," Jeanette answered sullenly. She gestured toward the primate cages waiting on the other
side of the glass. The experimental animals were only one of the things here that shouldn't be. When she'd
been a street chemist, she had to make do with what she could get, with random customers as her
experimental subjects. These days things were much more satisfactory: absolute immunity from the law,
pure chemicals to work with, the best apparatus, and an unlimited budget.
But no human subjects.
"It's too dangerous," he'd said, and for years she'd accepted that. There'd been too much else to
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]