The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

She peered through the blinds and saw a lobby that was empty, save for one deputy.

“So far as we know, Coop, there are only three here. Two deputies and Agent Hedgecock. All the other officers are out dealing with the mess that was left behind. You seen anybody else here?”

“Uh. No. Not that I recollect. Sammie, what are you thinking?”

“What I’m thinking is that it’s 9:01, and Jamie doesn’t have much time. There’s only three.”

“Three. Right. Carrying them little doohickeys called guns.”

“I can’t do this without you, Coop. OK? Are you with me on this?”

He sighed. “I dunno what you got, but we can’t do a jailbreak.”

“Yes, we can. Think about it. It’s three against three, and they don’t believe we’re a threat. I lost my parents, you’re stewing about your folks coming, and my cousin in there can barely think for himself. Right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Element of surprise. I got it. But may I again call your attention to them guns? Just because we’ve been dodging bullets all morning don’t mean our luck is permanent.”

“Daddy said luck is a side-effect of creative thinking. Time to get creative. We’re walking out of here with Jamie. I don’t care how we do it.”

Michael tossed a half-eaten donut into the trash and groaned.

53

T HIS ISN’T ME, Jamie convinced himself as he prepared to jump Agent Hedgecock and go for the pistol.

“But it is.” Lydia’s kiss melded to his cheek like an ice cube. “You are a Jewel of Eternity. He stands in your way. Leave now.”

Jamie jumped to his feet with the effortless balance of a butterfly, his mouth filled with murderous, drooling saliva. Somewhere deep within, in a place he wanted to grab hold of, a voice cried out, “This is not me.” Jamie fought back against the Jewel’s bloodlust. He succeeded in delaying the attack by a couple of critical seconds, just enough time for failure.

The agent backed away, his hands in a defensive posture.

“John, I am not trying to hurt you or put you in jail. We need to know about your aunt and uncle. Very nasty things have happened this morning. Many people have been killed. Don’t you want to help prevent other people from being killed, too?”

Rage bubbled underneath, his skin roiled with an electric zeal to attack. Shadows crept through the room, slithering up walls and across the ceiling. He heard a million crickets and crackling glass.

“Please leave me alone. I don’t know anything.”

“I think you do.”

The agent’s jacket rang, and Hedgecock reached inside, grabbing a cell from his shirt pocket. Again, Jamie glimpsed the holstered pistol, realized the agent was distracted, and allowed his mind to drink from a poisoned pool. He prepared to pounce.

Yet Hedgecock grabbed the laptop and rushed to the door without acknowledging Jamie. An Austin Springs deputy shut the door behind the agent and locked it again. Jamie pounded on the door and begged to be released, but he heard no response.

In seconds, Jamie saw clearly again. He turned to Lydia.

“I didn’t do it,” he said. “I’m stronger than you.”

Lydia’s smug, confident smile faded.

“You misunderstand. I never implied the Jewel controlled your conscious will. On the contrary, you have always had a partnership. Sometimes, this arrangement has manifested itself without your knowledge or consent.”

“Now you’re just making stuff up. I’m in charge of who I am.”

At once, the confident smile returned. “Are you sure? Did you act on your own devices when you heard your parents’ killer was in jail? Were you in the habit of running through the streets screaming bloody murder while carrying a baseball bat, determined to kill out of vengeance? Would you consider such rage normal behavior? No, I think not, my dearest boy.”

The fragments of that day two years ago returned on occasion, but most of what he knew came from the stories told by witnesses; the rest was pure anger clouded in a blanket of blinding white light.

Lydia did not let up. “Fury is a remarkable concept, my sweet child. You see, fury in its most raw, unvarnished form is perfection. It holds within its hand the fire from which the universes were created and in which they will eventually destroy themselves. Creation and destruction are founded upon the ideals of fury. As is the ethereal matter that ties the universes together. As is the program which, in less than one hour, will shed its skin and take its true form.”

“You’re crazy,” he whispered. “You’re talking nonsense.”

“Or perhaps only now am I telling you the entire truth.”

Lydia closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep, measured breath. When she opened them again, they were black as the deepest abyss.

“Where do you believe the shadows came from?” She asked. “What of the things you heard? The crickets? The cracking of glass? The screams that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere? The blackness that enveloped the night sky and blotted out the stars? Were these part of your imagination, your delirium, your fears made manifest? Oh, Jamie.”

“Stop this.” The unsettling urgency of rage stiffened him again.

“These were not imagined. Jamie, you are a Jewel. You have the power to see beyond the limitations of a physical world. You can feel what is beyond. You draw rage from the natural energy coursing through your blood. If you channeled your mind to leap past the senses, you could touch the heart of the universe. You could see where it all began, feel the fire that has burned for billions of years and that even still, pushes the stars ever outward.

“With this power, you could see the colonies of Earth though you be light-years and a literal universe away. You are the beginning and the end, and there are only nine others