His face did not match the picture on Ralph’s ID badge, but that was not a real problem. It was the work of just a few seconds for Mako to hypnotize the sentries at the various checkpoints. Soon he was out of lockup altogether, enjoying a cup of coffee in the guards’ break room. He exchanged a few pleasantries with the tall fellow who was restocking the snack machines. Several minutes later, it was Mako in the snack-machine man’s coveralls, driving toward Colston’s main gate in the vending company’s van.
“That was fast,” commented the sentry in the guardhouse.
“Have a 3 Musketeers,” Mako offered, handing a candy bar up through the window.
It was an error. As the man moved to accept the gift, another sentry behind him got a good look at the van’s driver — the single black brow, striking dark eyes, and hawklike Roman nose. It was not an appearance anyone would forget.
“Hey — you’re not the same guy who came in here!”
Mako knew a moment of alarm. It would be easy to bend either guard, but not both at the same time.
His burning eyes brought the first sentry under his control in a matter of seconds. “Your partner is an escaping inmate. Arrest him before he gets away!”
And while the two guards wrestled on the floor of the booth, Mako reached in the door, pulled the lever that opened the gate, and drove out of prison forever. He was a free man.
There was much to be done.
Jax took his seat across from Dirk Starkman.
“Maybe I should just ring the bell right now and save myself the trouble,” the former president of the West Coast branch of the Sandman’s Guild announced in a good-natured tone.
Captain Pedroia was patient. “You know the colonel doesn’t take shortcuts.”
“I’m a little outgunned,” the big man said plaintively. “If this was a pie-eating contest, on the other hand …”
Jax turned the full brunt of his color-changing eyes on Starkman’s pudgy features. He felt a bit of a counterattack from his subject, but nothing to cause him any difficulty. Starkman was a protégé of Axel Braintree, but his actual powers were mediocre. Barely thirty seconds had gone by before Jax saw the PIP image appear.
“You are very calm,” he intoned. “Very relaxed …”
The impressions seeped through the mesmeric connection — a lifetime of crash diets and exercise regimens, summer camps for overweight kids. Eventually the portly actor had become so sick of always being cast as the fat guy that he’d begun to use hypnotism to get better parts. Braintree had seen him on Broadway, playing Romeo opposite a Juliet who was a third his weight. Axel had known instantly that no three-hundred-pound actor could win that role except through hypnotism.
The presence of Braintree — even in someone else’s thoughts — brought Jax enormous sadness.
“There are innocent children in trouble,” he informed his subject, anxious to end the connection. “There’s only one way to help them. You have to ring that bell. The quicker you get there, the sooner they’ll be saved. Now wake up and go!”
Dirk Starkman had never moved so fast in his life. Even when he stumbled over a chair, his big legs kept pumping. He hit the ringer so hard that he knocked it off the wall.
He was still slapping at the spot where the bell used to be when he came back to himself, and assumed a sheepish grin. “I guess I lost.”
“Big-time,” Evelyn Lolis confirmed.
“Took you long enough, Dopus,” Wilson spat. “Thought you were supposed to be special.”
Jax didn’t respond. The images of Braintree had left him shaken, and he didn’t trust his own voice.
“Since you’re so confident, Wilson,” Pedroia jumped in, restoring the ringer to its place on the wall, “why don’t you take Dirk’s spot opposite Jax?”
“Sure,” Wilson blustered, sitting down. “I’m not afraid of him.”
Jax set his jaw, determined to get this over with. The last thing he wanted was to spend too much time inside the head of this jerk.
Their eyes locked and Jax overpowered Wilson easily, bringing up a PIP image that was instant and vivid. Jax had already abandoned the notion of trying to convince Wilson to help children in trouble. Wilson didn’t care about children or anybody else. He cared about Wilson, and that was as far as it went. Jax was about to issue a direct command when the wave of emotion hit him. There was no mistaking it: hatred. It was so angry and so raw that, for a moment, he looked away and almost lost the mesmeric link. This wasn’t a clash of power against power. It was pure loathing and jealousy and ugliness — the kind of passion that Dr. Mako was an expert at recognizing and turning to his advantage.
“Wilson!” Although the encounter was silent, Jax was shouting, as if trying to make himself heard over a roar. “Ring the bell! Do it now!”
Wilson slouched over to the wall, rang the bell, and cursed under his breath at the knowledge that Jax had bested him yet again.
“I wasn’t ready,” he mumbled.
“Next victim!” chanted Starkman.
Jax was surprised to find Stanley X settling into the seat opposite him. The eight-year-old had never looked younger, with his huge owl eyes and serious expression. A tiny droplet hung from the tip of his perpetually runny nose. Was this little kid really about to take on Jackson Opus?
Jax turned to the captain. “You’re joking, right?”
“What’s the matter, Dopus?” Wilson challenged. “Scared of an eight-year-old?”
“This comes straight from the colonel,” Pedroia reported. “Everybody versus everybody else. Let’s get it over with.”
With a sigh, Jax focused his concentration on Stanley’s remarkable amber eyes. They were large — almost anime large — and seemed to glow with an inner fire.
The beginnings of the PIP appeared right on schedule, only to wink out a moment later, to be replaced by the familiar stirring in Jax’s brain. Stanley had fought off his incursion and was trying one of his own. For an eight-year-old who barely understood what it meant to be a mind-bender, he certainly seemed to have talent — even against Jax, who took down experienced hypnotists like Evelyn Lolis and Ray Finklemeyer without breaking a sweat.
Next came that mental sensation of swallowing water down the wrong pipe. Jax fought it off and bore down on Stanley, but after a few seconds the feeling was back again.
“Relax,” the boy told him.
Jax was amazed to find that he was relaxed. In fact, he was awesome — calm and utterly at peace with —
“No!” he exclaimed suddenly, twisting away from Stanley’s gaze.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Wilson crowed. “Is Jackson Dopus losing?”
“Of course not!” Jax exploded. “I just —”
He fell silent. Just because Wilson was a muscle-head didn’t necessarily mean he was wrong. If Jax had to avert his eyes to avoid being bent, then he was losing.
Pedroia seemed to read his mind. “It’s not a contest, Jax. We’re all learning how this works. If you change the rules halfway through, we won’t be able to trust the results of the experiment.”
“My bad.” Jax’s heart was pounding. “I’ll get it right this time.”
By now, he and Stanley were the center of attention as they squared off across the tabletop.
Once again, Jax took on the amber eyes, trying to channel the combined force of centuries of Opus and Sparks mind-benders that had come together in him. Stanley peered back, his owl-like features earnest.
Doesn’t he understand how huge this is? Jax wondered in his dismay. No one was a match for Jackson Opus — nobody except Mako, anyway. Even Axel Braintree had lost the ability to penetrate his pupil’s defenses a few months into his training.
And now some third grader marches in here and —
When the attack came, it was no mere water-down-the-wrong-pipe sensation. It was a jackhammer boring directly into Jax’s brain. For an instant, it was nothing short of unbearable.
“You feel wonderful …” Stanley’s voice persisted.
“No!”
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Then it was over and Jax was awash in a sense of happiness and well-being, just as the voice had guaranteed. He trusted the voice 100 percent. It never occurred to Jax to question the fact that it seemed to belong to a young child. It had promised him this euphoria and it had delivered. It was good. As long as he did as it asked, everything would be wonderful.
Jax was on his feet now, crossing the room. He didn’t question it; the voice wanted this, and that was enough for him. He was completely unaware of the many eyes on him as he reached for the bell.
Ding!
The sound brought Jax back to himself in the midst of a rousing round of applause. Wilson boosted Stanley onto his shoulders and carried him around the room, where he was showered with backslaps and high fives from hypnotists and soldiers alike.
“Good one, Stanley,” Jax offered in a muted tone. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” The solemn boy wasn’t smiling exactly, but he was clearly pleased at all the admiration he was getting.
“Looks like there’s a new boss hog around here, Dopus!” Wilson sneered.
Jax was amazed by the intensity of his reaction. Why should he care that Stanley X hypnotized him one time? For starters, Jax had just grappled with Dirk and Wilson, so he was probably a little worn down. Besides, he’d been bent before. It was no big deal. And anyway, he should be thrilled that someone was coming along to take a bit of the pressure off him. What had being number one gotten him so far? It had turned him and his family into exiles, it had nearly gotten him killed more than once, and it had made him into someone else’s puppet — first Mako’s, and now the army’s. Some gift! It was more like a curse! If Stanley was going to take that off his hands, then the little guy was the best friend Jax ever had!
I should be happy about this, Jax told himself, watching Wilson jog around the room, bearing Stanley on another victory lap.
So why did it make him feel so uneasy?
Dr. Pedroia’s office was in a small corner of the HoWaRD building. All the hypnotists had regular sessions with the team’s psychiatrist. Just as regular soldiers had to ensure their bodies were in shape, those who worked with their minds had to keep up their mental health. The army did not want unstable mind-benders.
“The last shrink I saw had a cushier office — no offense,” Jax commented, surveying the drab government-issue furniture. “He was on Park Avenue, thirty-fifth floor.”
“Why were you seeing a psychiatrist back then?” Pedroia inquired.
Jax shrugged. “Misunderstanding. I was bending people by mistake, and I thought the PIPs were hallucinations. My folks were convinced I was crazy. If only it could have been that simple.”
The captain was confused. “But surely you knew. You’re descended from two great hypnotic families.”
Jax shook his head. “Mom had no clue. She’d never even heard the name Sparks until Axel told us. And my dad … let’s just say he didn’t have the happiest childhood. It’s not easy to be the non-hypnotic kid of two big-time benders. Did he weed the vegetable garden because he wanted to, or was he given a little nudge of encouragement?”
Pedroia was skeptical. “Your grandparents mesmerized their own son?”
“The Opuses have been doing stuff like that for centuries. You think the Light Brigade wanted to charge into the valley of death? Some great-great-granduncle bent the bugler to play the charge instead of the retreat. Pretty much wherever you look in history, there was an Opus in the middle of it, rigging the game to make a quick buck, or mixing in just because they could.”
The psychiatrist was fascinated. “And your mother’s family?”
“The Sparkses were different,” Jax replied. “They were, like, nobility, even royalty. To them it was an art, or at least entertainment. Baron Bartholemeus Sparks had a living art gallery of hypnotized volunteers impersonating ancient Greek statues. His younger brother invited four hundred people to a foxhunt, then bent half of them into chasing a chipmunk while the other half watched. But the Sparks power died out a long time ago — at least everyone thought it had, until my mom married an Opus.”
“But not all hypnotists are related to the Opus and Sparks families,” Dr. Pedroia reasoned.
“Those are just the two most powerful bloodlines,” Jax agreed. “There are other big names — Yamamoto, El Alamein. Axel used to talk about the Arcanov family, which included the spy Mata Hari and Dr. Ivan Pavlov. No one knows much about the other Arcanovs, though. They were really mysterious.”
“The army is putting together a hypnotic database for HoWaRD. Only Colonel Brassmeyer has seen it so far, but I’d like you to take a look when it’s further along. You have a unique perspective — you’ve worked with Sentia, you had a close relationship with Axel Braintree, and, of course, your father has direct memories of his Opus family.”
Jax fidgeted in his chair. “Yeah, maybe.”
“You shouldn’t take it so hard that Stanley was able to bend you. There’s no hard-and-fast rule about who can mesmerize who. It doesn’t make you weaker than him. You know how special you are.”
“That’s not it,” Jax replied. “I don’t care about Stanley. It’s just that … well, I was hoping to get my parents out of here as soon as Colonel Brassmeyer gives the okay. And what you just said kind of sounds like I’m staying awhile.”
Pedroia looked sympathetic. “I have something to tell you, and you’re not going to like it. Two days ago, Elias Mako escaped from federal prison in Florida. No one has seen him since.”
Jax turned pale. “I warned them! There’s not a prison in the world that can hold Mako! You look him in the eye, and you’re lost.”
“So it isn’t possible for you and your family to leave Fort Calhoun. You’re stuck here, for your own safety.”
Jax was bitter. “If Mako can get out of a maximum-security prison, what makes you think he can’t get into a maximum-security army post?”
“Steps are being taken,” the psychiatrist assured him.
Jax folded his arms. “What steps can stop a guy who can get inside your mind?”
“Manpower,” Pedroia replied readily. “A sentry can be hypnotized. But if there are six or seven, he can’t reach them all at the same time, especially if they’ve been briefed on who and what to look out for. Remember — no one can hypnotize a bullet.”
Jax said nothing. More than once he had underestimated the power and resourcefulness of Elias Mako.
He couldn’t make that mistake again.
The chopper cruised over the desert, endless miles of scrub cactus and infinite beige. Jax sat stifling in his seat, sipping on a bottle of water, waiting for Colonel Brassmeyer, the only other passenger, to tell him what this was all about.
The colonel sat stiffly, too — but then again, he always did. Stiff was his style. Jax had never seen him sleep, but he was willing to bet that the man even slept stiffly. When he died, they wouldn’t have to wait for rigor mortis to set in. It was already there.
“Is this Arizona?” Jax guessed, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of the rotors.
The grunt from Brassmeyer could have been a yes or a no. Or possibly, “Call an ambulance; I’m being devoured by fire ants.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re there,” came the reply.
“Here? We’re in the middle of nowhere!” And then Jax saw it. A town had appeared on the horizon. He blinked. No, it wasn’t a town. It was more like someone had taken a small chunk of an existing city and plopped it down in the heart of the desert.
As the chopper approached, Jax could make out low apartment buildings, neighborhoods of small neat homes, and even stores and businesses. And there were people bustling through the streets, going about their business, walking with baby carriages and pets. There was even traffic on the roadways, although the entire place was maybe half a mile square.
“What is this?” Jax asked in bewilderment.
“I brought you here because I want you to know exactly what you’re d
oing. This is Delta Prime, population seven hundred and fifty-three volunteers. This is an entirely artificial test community constructed to simulate a larger city.”
“Yeah, but what does it have to do with me?” Jax asked.
Brassmeyer called up to the pilot. “Turn us around. We’re done here.”
“What do you mean, we’re done?” Jax squeaked. “All I saw was a bunch of houses and buildings! You need me to do something, but I don’t even understand what it is!”
The colonel offered up a thin-lipped smile. “Opus, welcome to Operation Aurora.”
It was a setup that Jax had experienced once before — in New York City, at Dr. Mako’s Sentia Institute. He was peering into the lens of a large video camera, and his face — liquid irises floating somewhere between green and blue — filled a monitor on the wall.
“Look into my eyes … closer…. You are very calm, very relaxed….”
The military personnel in the room — Brassmeyer, Pedroia, and two others — were looking everywhere in the studio except at the monitor or directly at Jax. Even the soldier serving as cameraman didn’t dare gaze into the viewfinder once the recording had started. This was Jackson Opus in full hypnotic mode, and no one wanted to be bent by mistake. The army had even invented a term for it: collateral mesmerism.
“Now, when I snap my fingers,” Jax went on, “you will remember nothing of me or this message. Life will go on, as it always has, and you will be happy and contented — until Thursday, October Fourth, at exactly ten AM. At that time, you will stop whatever you’re doing and remain absolutely still, until you hear these words: Briar Rose. Then, and only then, you will go back to your regular life as if nothing at all has occurred.” He raised his hand to his chin and snapped his fingers.
Jax had never seen the colonel so enthusiastic.
“Outstanding! We’ll broadcast this message on TV at Delta Prime regularly until zero hour. Then we can measure the results.”
“What results?” Jax queried. “Whether or not everybody stopped? Why is that important?”