Jenny Plague-Bringer(92)

They led her down the corridor. She noticed Seth through one of the narrow windows, still unconscious on a bed in his own cell. She didn’t see Jenny in any of the cells, though, just a Latino girl she didn’t recognize, sitting on her cot and staring into space.

The guards took her through another, larger steel door at the end of the hallway, which had to be unlocked with a plastic ID card. They turned down another corridor and passed through another secure door, then rode an elevator up a level.

As they took her down a narrow side corridor to a suite of offices, Mariella felt her skin prickle. She recognized where she was—the colors had gone from gray and green to white, making it feel more like a modern research lab and less like a military base, but beneath that, everything was still the same. It felt the same.

Memories from that past life bubbled everywhere in the underground base. Why not? They were gathering back in the same place—herself, the plague-bringer, the healer, the seer. She wondered whether the Latin girl in the other cell just happened to be the love-charmer, or perhaps the dead-speaker.

The setting and characters might have been the same, but Mariella intended for the story to end differently this time.

The guards took her to exactly the office door she expected, the largest office. Inside, a burly man in a general’s uniform stood behind his desk, and she barely had to look at him to recognize that this was the man from her vision, the man who’d been searching for them. She also knew that, in a past life, this man had been a Nazi S.S. officer named Helmut Kranzler. There was no mistaking his heavy, menacing presence.

He smiled and offered his hand, his green eyes eerily like her own. There was a strange energy in the room between them. They were opposites, but not exactly the sort who fell in love like Jenny and Seth. She wondered if he had any of his past memories, or if he were limited to the gnat-sized viewpoint of a single lifetime.

“Miss Visconti, my name is General Ward Kilpatrick, United States Department of Defense.” He shook her hand, and she noticed he wore gloves, maybe to protect himself from her power. “Thank you for meeting with me.”

“I wasn’t aware I had a choice, General,” Mariella said.

“Please, ma’am, have a seat. You can relax now.” He dropped into his chair and waved the guards away. “You can go, boys, she’s not violent.”

“We’ll be right outside.” One of the guards closed the door.

Mariella slowly sat down opposite him. “Where am I?” she asked, though in a sense, she knew perfectly well. Germany. The Harz mountains.

“You are at a top-secret defense research facility,” Ward said. “I apologize for bringing you here under these circumstances, ma’am, but you were in the company of a wanted mass murderer. Jennifer Morton. I’m not sure what name she might have told you.”

“Genevieve? She can’t be a murderer.”

“Oh, yes.” Ward turned his computer screen toward her and summoned images of bodies in clear plastic bags, disfigured and twisted by horrific diseases. “Two hundred people, right in her own hometown. Kids from her school. The pastor at her church. The mayor.” He scrolled through more and more pictures, intestines poking through rotten flesh, eye sockets full of tumorous gore, until Mariella had to stop herself from being sick. “She did this to her own, Miss Visconti, not to some foreign enemy. Can you imagine a person who would inflict that on her own people?”

“I can’t.” Mariella shook her head. “Are you sure she did it? She seems so nice.”

“She did it. Her touch spreads a deadly infection...you already know all about that, Miss Visconti. We overheard you have a secret of your own, don’t you?” He leaned forward, grinning and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “What is it like, Miss Visconti? Seeing other people’s futures?”

“You know about that?” Mariella faked a surprised gasp. “I tried to keep it secret for so long.”

“Your secret will remain safe with me, don’t you worry.” Ward leaned back. “Miss Visconti, you’re a law-abiding citizen from a good family. How did you get tangled up with these criminals, Jenny and Seth?”

“I only met them a few weeks ago, honestly,” Mariella said. “If you’ve been spying on them, you must know that, don’t you? Whatever terrible crimes they’ve committed, I want you to know that I was not involved, I barely know these people, and I just want to go home.” Mariella’s voice cracked, and she teared up. “I just want to see my family. That’s all.”

“Oh, no, wait.” He sat up, taken aback by her sudden outpouring. “You don’t need to be afraid as long as you cooperate. You see, this project ultimately affects the entire Western world. We hoped that, given your family’s prominence in Italy, you might be willing to work with us, on the side of law and order.”