I thought of Drake, strapped down and drugged. When was the last time he got to exercise or move around? Better off than him, but lucky? Not so much.
The nurse left me alone in my room, with only the monotony of my new life to occupy my mind.
Thank God I still had my connection to Drake, but first I needed to get cleaned up. They'd stripped me of my bloody, torn dress, but I still smelled of airplane debris and death.
I pulled my IV across the room to my bathroom and used up what little strength remained to wash myself. Dirty water swirled into the drain, and I kept rinsing and washing until that water ran clear. If only I could cleanse my insides so easily.
Sapped to near exhaustion, I searched the closet for clothes—something familiar and comfortable—and found some sweatpants and a t-shirt. I took the IV bag down and pulled it through the sleeve in my shirt, allowing me to dress. I was tempted to tear the damn thing out, but my loving nurse probably wouldn't like that very much.
Once tucked into bed, and before sleep could overtake me, I reached out to Drake. "I think I have a plan."
Chapter 19 – Sam
I tried to infuse my mental voice with more authority and confidence than I actually possessed. "We need to get your powers back. So I'm thinking I need to find a way to switch the medicine they have you on, so we can get the drugs out of your system. When your strength returns and you can manipulate people with your mind again, we can work together to get out of here."
'That was my thought, too. Next time the nurse comes to replace the fluid, I'll look at the bag more closely and tell you what it's called. You can poke around in her mind to see where they keep it.'
"Sounds good. I'll just have to figure out how to get out of here to make the switch. I'm hoping they won't keep a pregnant girl locked up all the time. I need to walk around and stuff, to keep the baby healthy. Don't I?"
'I guess so. One of my foster moms had some complications while pregnant. She was forced into bed rest for months. That's when I had to go to another home. It was too much for them. So I don't know.'
No way did I want bed rest for months! "Great, thanks for the pep talk."
'Hey, just trying to be helpful. We might want to have a Plan B in place.'
"We're going to have to be careful. Dr. Pana can use my powers against me. He was also able to use Kyle's fire powers. I'm guessing Dr. Pana can tap into any paranormal's powers and use them. How can we possibly fight against that?"
'He's got to have some weaknesses, some way to gain the upper hand.'
"He's unskilled. It's like he's a kid playing with toys he doesn't understand. I don't know if that makes him easier to beat or more dangerous, like a kid with a loaded gun. If only I had your ability to control minds!"
'That would be awesome. Wait, I wonder... have you ever tried to use another person's power?'
"No, why would I?" The idea intrigued me, but I had no reason to believe it was even possible.
'Maybe you couldn't do it with most powers, but what about other mental powers? Your mind-reading is similar to what I can do. You gather information from their minds, and I manipulate information. Either way, we're accessing a person's thoughts. I bet you could do it if you tried. Maybe that's why we have this mental connection, because our powers are so much alike. And maybe... maybe that's why they paired us up, because they want kids with our combined power.'
That made sense, although the thought of them genetically planning our babies, with some nefarious, long-term plot, made me ill. No time to think of that now. Could I learn to control minds like Drake? I'd never tried it, but... how to start?
'Next time the nurse comes in make sure you're linked to me, and see if you can get her to do one small thing mentally.'
"Okay, but how?"
'Well, how do you read minds?'
I'd never really thought about it before. I'd always known how to do it. The hard part had been learning to control it. "I form a link with them, like a colored chord that goes from my mind to theirs—kind of like plugging in a telephone. Once it's connected, the information flows through it. If I have to, I can go into their mind and extract more thoughts, not just the ones they're having in the moment, but previous thoughts. That's a lot harder, because it's not a neat filing system where I can just look up what I want. It's a mix of images, sounds and smells, all layered on itself. That's where the good doctor fails. From what I could tell, he can glean immediate and pressing thoughts from someone when tapped into my power, but he can't dig deeper."
'It's not that different then.' He sounded more excited than he had before. Maybe we did indeed have a chance at succeeding. 'When you're in their mind to read it, instead of just receiving the flow, send information back. Implant it there like it's their own thought. We did something very similar when Luke and Lucy were under the influence of those drugs. Only, instead of pushing against a fog, you'll be pushing a specific thought or command, but the energy and focus are the same.'