“Danny, his Dad calls him Danny. Maybe, the cat’s for him.”
Harry Turtledove was scooped up in Mark’s arms, and he called out, “anyone see a cat carry case in here?”
Shoved inside, my/our vision was limited as seen through the bars. Harry meowed plaintively; both of us hated the confines of the crate. Being dangled from the handle and bumped against his legs on the way out to his SUV made both of us sick. The HS dude followed him out. “You hear about the stock brouhaha? The SEC is all over that broker on insider trading. Seems the Senator made a killing on a minor thousand dollar trade.”
“Illegal?”
“Can’t prove it. Besides, he’s already rich, and his reputation is one of the most stable on the Hill. Hell, he doesn’t even get parking tickets.
“You know, that’s the third weird coincidence surrounding the Senator,” Andrews mused.
I could see the other dude’s face, especially after Mark shoved the crate in the backseat of his Denali and belted it in. He slammed the door. I did hear the other dude make weird noises and then what sounded like–‘interesting’. We were left alone in the parked vehicle. He did leave the window open and it was cool enough out that the cat wouldn’t overheat. He meowed, curled up and went to sleep. Me too.
Chapter 6
Faces gradually became clear. Leaning over me. I felt out of it, like my body didn’t belong to me anymore. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. Tried to speak but my mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my lips were sewed together. My eyes burned as my eyes wandered over the funny shaped people. She adjusted my pillow, my sheets and pulled my arms on top of the covers. My head felt weird. Sticky. Itchy. I turned it slightly and saw thin leads coming up from my neck and down to a machine that recorded colored lines, and came out on graph paper.
A BP cuff inflated on my arm, but I couldn’t see the results. That Doctor and another one that looked Chinese-American were standing near my Dad and Ms. Penny, Felice and holy cow, President Rickover was there, too.
“Dantan,” he said formally. “I had to thank you in person. For saving my life,” he started.
“I’m still not voting for you,” I mumbled past the dryness.
Dad understood me and laughed. “Just take it easy, Danny. You just had surgery on your brain. You’re going to feel weird. Doctor Soong did a biopsy. You had a seizure two days ago and it was on the EEG, gave the Doctor something to work with.”
“Epileptic?” I managed.
“No, Danny,” the Chinese Doctor said in perfect English. “You’re not an epileptic.”
“Am I gonna die?” I heard Dad and Felice’s gasps.
“In about seventy years, Danny, I hope. The biopsy isn’t cancerous. Frankly, we don’t know what it is, but it’s not normal brain tissue. These seizures or episodes are indicative of something wrong in your brain, and trigger a circulatory shutdown. Do you remember when it started?”
“Don’t remember even doing it,” I mumbled. Looked at my father and Felice. “Daddy, I’m scared.” Felt my eyes brimming with tears and the two of them hugged me. I felt wetness on my neck and cheeks, never heard the rest of them, leaving as I burst into sobs on my Dad’s chest, unable even to hug him back. I was enfolded in their arms and was not comforted.
*****
I lay in bed in the room darkened to give my eyes some respite as bright lights triggered those massive headaches with nausea. The slightest movement would make me hurl. My appetite was gone; I no longer wanted to eat anything.
Felice stayed with me as well as my Dad. The orderlies had brought in a spare bed where he could sack out and I could see him when I woke up.
They had me on drugs. It made me sleep most of the time, had me hooked up to IVs and I’d overheard them telling Dad, if I didn’t start eating, they’d be forced to put me on IV food or a gastric tube down my nose.
“Dad?”
“I’m here, Danny,” his voice came instantly.
“How long is this going on, Dad?”
“Till you’re better, Danny.”
“Not gonna get better, Dad.” I paused, struck by a certainty. “Dad, go talk to Uncle Town.”
“Why, Danny? He’s got dementia. He can’t tell us anything.”
“Dad, please. Tell him. Ask him for help. He knows.” I felt myself fading away again. “Dad, he’s like me.”
Wasn’t sure if he heard me. Felt Felice tug on my arm and say something. Couldn’t hear her either. Saw an electrical sheet in front of my eyes, as if fireworks and welders torches were playing a musical score. Felt a warmth on my tongue, a brassiness give way to velvet darkness.
*****
Danny? Dantan Townsley? Time to wake up, boy. I knew those names, that voice. Forced my eyes open, struggled at the horrible fullness in my throat that made me want to gag. Looked around as tears pooled involuntarily down my eyes.
“Danny, relax. There is a breathing tube down your throat, helping your lungs. I can feel you struggling to breathe on your own. Your 02 levels are up so we can remove the breather. Cough and on three we will pull it out.”
I coughed violently, wanting it out NOW. He removed it smoothly and the gagging sensation left but my throat was really sore. I couldn’t speak, just flailed my arms at them in anger. Someone grabbed them and held me down. “Relax, Danny or I’ll sedate you,” Doctor Kujowski said sternly.
Dad’s terrified face. Doctor Soong. Two nurses, two orderlies. No Ms. Penny, no Felice. Uncle Townsley. He shuffled forward, dressed neat and clean with a visitor’s badge on his lapel. In a suit.
“Uncle Town? You going to a funeral?” I asked. The last time he’d worn that suit was at Mom’s funeral.
“No, Danny boy,” he smiled; his odd eyes the same as mine and Mom’s. “You asked for me. Do you remember that?”
Dad stared at my uncle. Sure didn’t seem like he had dementia. His eyes were bright and focused.
“I remember Dad telling me about a cat. Felice and her Dad visiting me. Being in the hospital.” It hurt to talk and Dad gave me some ice chips, which helped.
“You’ve got to learn to back off, Dantan. To keep part of yourself out or it’ll kill you.”
“How, Uncle Town?” I asked and it was as if we were the only two people in the room. Abruptly, I was inside his head, not on my own but he’d carried me in there.
A small cozy room with a red velvet chair that Uncle Town gestured me to sit in. I sat. “You’re like me, Danny boy. A little something extra that goes with our eyes. I call it Psi. Your Mom had it also, but it went away after you were born or she would’ve known about the minivan.”
“Uncle Townsley, why are you in this nursing home if you’re not…”
“Crazy? I am crazy, Danny boy. I learned too late how to filter what happened in my brain. Sometimes, I can push it back for a few hours, enough to warn about what I see. I can feel it creeping up on me now. See?”
He pointed at a pulsating darkness that was encircling us, with gibbering monsters slowly taking shape and morphing into even worse ones. “Try to make a room in your head, Danny. A place only you have the key. Tight, impregnable like the vaults in Fort Knox. Keep your mind in there when you feel yourself losing your reality.”
“I don’t lose reality, Uncle Town. I see and hear everything the cat or dog does,” I protested.
He smiled. “I wondered how yours would progress. I see events before they happen. You can read animal minds?”
“Not read them, I’m in there, but I’m still me. I… use their senses. It’s after I get out that I’m… sick.”
He wandered around the chair, ignoring the approaching willies, searching my eyes. It felt like fingers poking in my head.
“Don’t bring all of your mind with you when you go in,” he told me. “You have to learn how to step back a bit.”
“How?” He grimaced and hands reached out to grab him and disappear into the swirling maelstrom of what I knew was his particular madness. I jumped up, lunged
for his arm, and we engaged in a tug-of-war that resolved by a sudden snap of both arms where my uncle popped free to bounce on the armchair on top of me.
I screamed as a wave of intense light burst out of my eyes, mouth and nose to swallow the writhing darkness.
“What did I do?” I asked shakily as white light bathed us both, opening up the room around us into a real room under bright fluorescence.
“You fixed me,” he said in amazement and he slowly faded as I opened my eyes in my hospital room.
Chapter 7
The same crew, minus Felice and someone I’d seen before but couldn’t remember where until he brought out a cat crate giving it to Dad. Uncle Town was seated on my right side next to my father and his eyes were bright and with it.
“Danny,” he grinned. No one looked alarmed as if I’d gone away for hours.
“I brought Uncle Townsley,” Dad was saying. “Now what?”
I yawned. Tried to sit up. Felt better, even if my throat was killing me. Put my hands on my head, and felt bandages. “Hey,” I complained suddenly scared. “You didn’t shave my head, please tell me you didn’t.”
“Sorry,” the doc said. “We did so we could do a craniotomy. It’ll grow back fast.”
“Ugh. I’m bald. Felice will rib me endlessly.” I sighed. “Will you dudes lighten up? Y’all look like you’re going to a funeral.”
Dad choked and Uncle Town gripped his shoulder. “Mike, he’ll be okay,” he promised. “Just give him some time.”
The Chinese Doctor shone a penlight in my eyes and seemed pleased. He checked my reflexes, had me touch my nose with my index finger, push against his hands and asked me a bunch of silly questions which I answered without hesitation or error.
“No cognitive deterioration,” Soong said. “We’ll take the drain out a few days. For now, rest. Are you hungry, Danny? You can eat in a few hours if you feel up to it.”
“I’m thirsty, too.” Dad gave me water through a straw, and I sucked the Styrofoam cup dry. “Can I get up?” All of them looked at the doctors.
“You think you can, Dantan?” I tried, but whatever drugs were in me still had hold of my limbs. I felt like spaghetti left too long in boiling water. “Try again later this evening. We have you on some stiff tranquilizers. You weren’t the most cooperative kid, you know,” Doctor K. grinned. “You’ve a pretty good right hook.”
“Oh no,” I groaned. “I hit someone?”
“Don’t worry, he won’t press charges. He’s a Democrat,” he said and I laughed. Everybody left, except for Dad and Uncle Town.
“Dad, Felice’s Dad?”
“He’s fine. We apprehended the person before he got to the museum. The President did the opening ceremonies for me so I could come back here.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Four days, Danny. You’ve baffled them.” He turned to Mom’s uncle. “Townsley, what’s going on with my son? Do you understand, Townsley?”
“More than you know, Michael,” Uncle Town returned. “Danny has a gift. Like I did, like Evangeline did. An extra something in our heads that lets us know things, hear and see things. In Danny, it lets him ride inside the senses of animals, see what they see, hear what they hear, but interpreted as Danny’s mind does.”
“Can he read my mind?” Dad asked in a whisper.
“No,” we both said. “It doesn’t work that way for me, Dad. The only head I’d ever been in was Uncle Town, and he brought me inside there.”
Dad stared at my uncle. “You read minds?”
Uncle Townsley nodded. “What do you think drove me nuts?”
“You don’t sound crazy now,” Dad pointed out and laughed. “As if mind reading isn’t crazy.”
“Danny fixed me, somehow. For the first time in years, I can think.”
“Can you read my mind now?”
Uncle Townsley, hesitated, and shook his head. “Danny fixed me, but in doing so, he took away that part of my brain that had the ability.”
“Are you saying Danny will go the way you did, Townsley?”
He nodded slowly. “Unless Danny learns to filter and control it, he’ll wind up like me or worse. His ability has come on much earlier than mine.”
“And Evangeline?”
“Having Danny burned hers out early.”
“Evangeline was psychic?” Dad was skeptical.
“Not psychic, she could make you feel better by touching you. An empath. She felt your emotions and could enhance or change them.”
Dad said slowly, “she always knew how I felt, and when I was down, she always made me feel better.”
“I wish I’d been okay before she was hit, Michael,” Uncle Town said regretfully. “I tried to warn her, but no one believed me and I couldn’t stay together long enough to make anyone listen.”
“I know you tried, Townsley,” he was patient. “What are we going to do about Danny? Can you teach him how to control this thing?”
“I can try, Michael. I didn’t have much luck myself.”
*****
Mitchell Gaines requested a meeting with the Director and after waiting the requisite ten minutes, he was ushered into Oliver Sustain’s office to find the Director of Homeland Security busy reading memos and agent reports.
“Have a seat, Mitch,” he said, pushing over a cup of coffee black with sugar.
“I found something,” the agent reported, and Sustain looked up in surprise.
“Really? Already?”
“It’s not like this person was trying to hide anything. And I’m not sure exactly who, either. I’ve just found a common thread in over half the instances.”
Sustain gave his agent his undivided attention.
“Dantan De Rosier.”
Sustain laughed. “Senator De Rosier’s kid?”
Mitchell ticked off on his fingers, “one – the stock tip that led to a windfall was given to De Rosier’s broker on the kid’s say so. Two, the tip about the nut job who tried to assassinate the President came from the Senator, three,” he went on, listing a dozen cases where either the boy or the Senator was somewhere in the picture.
“What are you saying? This fourteen-year-old kid is a spy? Or Mike is?”
“De Rosier made half a million on a 1K transaction.”
“Senator De Rosier is worth millions,” Sustain scoffed.
“And his boy’s just been diagnosed with a brain tumor or something. Maybe he needs millions for surgery,” Mitchell argued.
“We have the best insurance money can buy,” Sustain shrugged. “And there’s no alternative medicine out there for cases of brain cancer. You want to dig into it a bit more?”
“Yes, Sir. I want to use the NSA to poke into the Senator’s background. The Senator brought his wife’s Great Uncle to see the kid.”
“Townsley Hutton? He’s in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.”
“I met him when I delivered the cat to the Senator. He seemed pretty with it to me.”
“Whatever you need, Mitch. But why would either the boy or the Senator relay the President’s words about the UN Secretary?”
Mitchell replied, “He told someone at school and it got back to a reporter by a schoolmate. The details are so accurate, she printed it. The kid swore it was Dantan who told him.”
“You talk to him, Dantan?”
“He’s pretty out of it, Director. The doctors did a biopsy on his brain; he’s been having bouts of withdrawal like seizures, but not the same electrical storm as a seizure. Couple of times, he stopped breathing. They’re pretty scared.”
“He might die?”
“The doctors are almost certain he will. They haven’t told the boy or the Senator yet because they aren’t sure what’s wrong with him, and because of Evangeline De Rosier’s death. Too close and too soon.”
“Is Senator De Rosier, asking for leave of absence from his seat?”
“I haven’t heard anything,” he admitted.
“Anyone else interested in S
enator De Rosier’s tip?”
Mitchell hesitated. “State police, FBI, NSA, and Secret Service were all over the crime scene. That agent – Jake James, he’s pretty sharp. He is asking questions about the Senator’s tip.”
“I’m curious about how Mike knew the man’s license plate numbers and address. Why don’t we set a little trap for the Senator and one for Dantan? Got any ideas?”
Mitchell grinned. “A few.”
“Let me know what happens.”
“At least surveillance on the kid will be easy. He’s stuck in a private room in a PEDS unit at Walter Reed.”
“Not Crowley?”
“He was transferred for the brain biopsy. Walter Reed has Soong. Doctor Kujowski called in some favors and had them bump the kid in.”He stood up, shook his boss’s hand. “I sent a Get Well package to the kid from you and the Department, boss.”
“Tasteful, I hope.”
“Kid likes puzzles, books and chocolate. I charged it to you.”
“Thanks. I’ll stop and give my best wishes to Mike,” Sustain returned.
“PEDS floor, room 2205. President’s been there every day with his daughter. She’s the kid’s girlfriend.”
“He’s in and out of the White House?” Sustain looked sharply at his agent.
“A few times. Hasn’t been back since his Dad was there for the Inauguration.”
“So he couldn’t have overheard Jason speaking.”
“Nope. I’m heading to my office to call the NSA for some deep research.”
“Call me when you hear anything.”
Mitchell nodded and shut the door quietly behind himself before heading for the elevators on the fourth floor where the day agents had their carrels. Deep cover employees came into the basements where they weren’t seen or recognized.
Chapter 8
I was screaming and that woke me up. Woke up everyone on the entire floor. I felt better, more alert. Dad wasn’t there to greet me or Uncle Townsley, just the nurses and they weren’t happy I was making so much noise.
“Mister De Rosier, please quiet down,” warned the hatchet-faced blonde. I took an instant dislike to her. The other one was a pretty Hispanic lady with curly black hair and doe soft brown eyes.
“Whas the matter, honey?” She asked as I swallowed spit.
“Nightmares. Where’s my Dad?” The lights were dimmed still, and the shades drawn. I could see bright lights in the hallway and hear the sound of monitors going off.