1.
Terry sat on her bed. It was early Thursday morning, and their plans were as ready as they could be. She’d leave to meet Gloria and Ken in a few minutes.
But she wanted to know something first, about herself, her own capability. She closed her eyes and put her hands on her belly, and she forced herself to relax and breathe deep. No drugs, no monitor watching her, nothing but her.
Go deeper, she coaxed herself and her surroundings faded. She walked into the black void, water beneath her feet. She’d almost given up when Alice appeared before her.
Her friend lay on a cot, not seeing Terry’s approach. She wore her hospital gown. Dark circles under her eyes. She looked haunted.
Alice? She sent the thought out as strongly as she could. We’re coming. Be ready.
Alice said nothing. There was no way to know if she’d seen or heard.
When Terry opened her eyes, the lamp at her bedside blinked on and off. She was ready.
2.
Brenner spent the day in his office in a state of excitement. Terry Ives had such high hopes for her plans that dashing them might be enough to make her cooperative in the long term. She’d already proven more stubborn than he’d expected. He almost respected that.
But he couldn’t truly respect anyone who engaged in such futile actions. As if he’d allow everything he intended to build here to be destroyed. Everything he’d worked for up to now. Others might not understand his commitment to the project, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t need their understanding of it; he only needed time to prove he was correct. The only thing that would be shut down today was a rebellion.
A tap came on his office door.
“Sir?” the security officer said.
“Yes. Report.”
“Ives and Flowers have arrived,” he went on. “The man didn’t show up today.”
Ken. Maybe he’d stop coming altogether. His results had been lackluster. “Thank you.”
Brenner didn’t immediately go to meet Terry, but took a detour to one of the pharmaceutical laboratories on the second level of the complex. He’d given specific instructions to the assistant director who ran it.
The lab was always a sterile, quiet flurry of activity. Men and women at large, complex machines, producing a variety of chemical substances to alter the brain or the body. It was for the latter that he came today.
“Is it ready for me?” Dr. Brenner asked.
The lab-coated man nodded. He was pale, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in ages, like a committed staffer should be. “It’ll take a couple of hours to work, give or take,” he said and produced a wide syringe with a cap.
“Perfect,” Brenner said, accepting the syringe and stashing it in his pocket.
He caught himself humming tunelessly on the way to Terry Ives’ room, winding through the labyrinth of hallways that formed his domain. He lingered at the window and watched her. She sat tall, waiting.
Soon, he’d break her spirit.
But first he’d have some fun.
“I see you kept your word,” he said, letting himself in. “I’m a little surprised. Your friend is doing fine here. I detected some serious hostility when we spoke.”
She gave him a fake smile. “Not all of us can afford to be good liars.”
Such spirit. Would her child be the same?
He had intended to take his time, but now that he was here, he found he couldn’t wait. He removed the syringe. “Hold out your arm, please.”
“What’s this?” She frowned. “I won’t take more acid.”
“I figured that much.” He shook his head. “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t tell you about your condition. This is an injection to help with the pregnancy. It won’t hurt you or our child.”
He saw the way she stiffened at his use of the term. But it was their child, as much his as hers.
“Why would I trust you to give this to me?”
He gestured, and the orderly let himself in. “Hold her,” Brenner said.
Terry resisted, but the man forced her to her feet. He pinned her arms to her sides.
Brenner inserted the needle into her skin at the elbow, pressing the plunger. Solving problems was simple when you had access to the right tools.
“What else do you want with me?” she asked, shaking off the orderly.
“That’s it for today. I just wanted to give you the injection and take some bloodwork.” He returned her fake smile to her. “You can just wait for your friends to finish.”
“That’s it?” she asked. “You’re going to let us leave?”
“Why, don’t you trust me, Terry?”
At that, she smirked. “Do I still have a brain in my head? I do. No, I don’t trust you.”
“Just rest,” he said. “Don’t tax yourself.”
“I will.” She reclined on the bed, playacting like a child. “Not because you said.”
“I’ll be back later.”
“I can’t wait.”
He didn’t like giving her the last word, but it wasn’t really. He went back to his office to wait for her to spring her silly little scheme.
3.
Terry would risk going to see Kali in person if she had to—but Brenner might figure it all out too soon. Now she was confident she could reach the void without his help, without anything but herself.
She wanted to know what he’d put in her arm, but was also relieved not to. She’d have to be content with knowing he’d never hurt a child he considered his…Well, not hurt in that way. Only in the way of imprisoning and turning them into a lab rat for his own sick purposes.
Terry sat and thought about each stage of the plan and how easily it could not work, and how perfectly they’d have to execute it. She thought of Andrew and what his last minutes must have been like and if she’d ever find out for sure. She vowed to finish her book when she got out of here and find out what happened to the Ring, and Frodo and Sam.
She wondered if Gloria was prepared. If Ken was. Alice.
They had to get this right.
But they needed Kali for it to work at all. Please let her be there, this one last time.
Getting to the nowhere-everywhere place took no time. Terry closed her eyes and took a step inside her mind and darkness surrounded her, her feet splashing soundlessly.
Kali appeared immediately. “Terry! I’m happy to see you!”
Terry had to laugh. The words were delivered in such a tone of surprise.
“I’m glad to see you, too. I need to talk to you about something very important. I need your help and so does Alice. And we want to help you.”
Kali was suspicious. “Does Papa know?”
“He can never know. I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it.”
Kali pursed her lips.
“Papa wants to hurt me and my baby.” Terry patted her tummy.
“You’re growing a baby?” Kali’s expression was awed.
“I am, and he wants to hurt her. He’s also going to hurt Alice—he could do great harm to her. Mess with things he shouldn’t.”
Kali looked up at Terry and her bottom lip trembled. “Because of me,” she whispered. “Because I told.”
“You didn’t mean to, I know.” Terry bent and put an arm around the child. “But this time, no one can know. It has to be a secret. Forever. We have to keep Alice safe. The future safe. Agreed?”
Kali nodded.
“Good. I need you to do an illusion…But only if you think you can control it. It’ll just be small.”
“I can try.” Her voice was soft.
“Okay. That’s good.” It was a gamble, but what wasn’t. “Do you think you can go to Alice’s room? And make it look like she’s deep asleep, so deep she’s not even breathing. No matter what happens, can you keep it up?”
Kali hesitated. Then she stomped. “But I don’t want Alice to go!”
“You can come with us. Leave your papa and be free.” Terry had no idea how she’d react to the suggestion, but she’d like nothing more than to take Kali with them, if there was any way to do it.
“I can’t.” Kali was solemn. “There are monsters coming here. I can’t leave my friend.”
Her friend, the one who Brenner had promised her. Terry put her hand on her belly. He’d promised her Terry’s child as a friend. Oh, how did she not see it before now? The little girl in Alice’s visions with 011 on her arm.
No, it can’t happen that way.
“Please, Kali? We’re your friends.”
The girl looked near tears. “I can’t leave. Papa won’t allow it.”
Terry had been afraid of this. She’d have to go on with the plan and come back for Kali, much as it hurt her heart to leave the girl behind. Even briefly. Jane kicked inside her. “I’ll be back for you. Okay? As soon as I can. So you think you can do this?”
“But Alice won’t come back, will she?”
Terry stared into the little face. “No, she can’t. Alice will have to be gone. Forever.”
“I want her to stay!” Kali stomped her foot again.
“Kali,” Terry said, “I understand. I want her to stay, too. But you don’t want her to be hurt and neither do I. Right?”
“Right.” But it was grumbled.
How could she make the girl understand?
“You know how you remember your mom? How she’s inside here?” Terry put her hand to her head, then her heart.
“Yes.”
“That’s because she’s your family. Friends are like your made family—and so you keep them with you even when you’re not together anymore. Even if you forget parts of them, because you get older…We hold our friend-families close. But we don’t have to be with those people for them to be a part of us. We carry them with us all the time.” Like she did Andrew.
“So Alice will always be with me?” Kali asked, after thinking it over.
“And so will I.”
“I’ll help you. And I won’t tell. I’ll protect you.” Kali smiled. “We’re family.”
Terry bent to kiss her forehead. To her surprise, Kali let her. “I won’t forget about you,” Terry said. “Ever. I promise. Now go. Remember, make it look like Alice is deep asleep. Not breathing. But don’t let on it’s you doing it, no matter what.”
“No matter what!” Kali capered away into the black, and not a moment too soon. Terry followed a sound out of the darkness, back to the exam room. An alarm.
Gloria.
It was time.
4.
Gloria had wanted to at least put one over on Dr. Green, but he’d phoned it in even more than usual. After giving her a tab of acid—which she did not take but pocketed—and a sheet full of coordinates to memorize, he left. No orderly with her, nothing.
This was her big chance to live out some adventure. She was going to play her comic-book moment to perfection. She even got to pick the lock, using the methods Alice had taught her.
She went into the hallway, and found the fire alarm. Then she pulled it.
Nothing happened.
This fire alarm was disabled? So Terry had been right about the eavesdropping on her room.
But they couldn’t have disabled them all. Not even mad scientists would risk something so foolish in a facility like this. A fire could destroy everything.
And so Gloria’s heart pounded, blood drumming in her ears, as she got her wish for a more difficult task. She hurried up the hall looking for another alarm to trigger. The hunt took precious minutes—she worried she was messing up the timing of everything—but finally, at last, she saw one up ahead.
Right past an orderly with a cleaning cart.
If we’re doing this, we’re doing this.
She shoved him out of the way with an “Excuse me!” and then pulled the alarm. There was a half-second of silence when she thought she’d failed again, but then the blissful sound of obnoxious sirens filled the air.
I did it. Just like Jean Grey.
The orderly had recovered and grabbed for her, but Gloria was too quick. She ducked his arm and raced back the way she’d come. Her work wasn’t done.
It turned out that Alice had given them the more covert entrance they needed in her electroshock wanderings. And so Gloria made for the rendezvous point on the north side of the building to meet Ken. She hoped her alarm would work as expected, confusing the reaction to his grand entrance.
Which should be happening any minute now. Any minute.
She laughed a little as she ran. She’d never realized it before: Superheroes were insane.
5.
Ken had never considered himself a car guy. He’d grown up around them. His dad was a car guy, and had wanted to go to auto shows and discuss prices and spoilers and paint jobs. But it wasn’t Ken’s thing.
Although he’d enjoyed their trip to the Brickyard enough. Alice and Gloria’s interest in the cars had almost been strong enough to transfer, like rubbing a pencil over an object to imprint it.
If Ken had been a car guy, he doubted he’d have felt even a hint of regret for Terry’s poor car as he drove closer to Hawkins. It wasn’t much of a car—a not insignificant reason for its being made into a sacrificial lamb.
But because he was Ken and decidedly still not a car guy, he told the old Ford how sorry he was that it had to end this way. “You’re a good car that has served Terry well. You’re not showing off. You’re not too speedy. But you’ve done your job with dignity. And now? You will be a warrior chariot.”
For Ken was driving it into battle.
The chain-link fence appeared on the left, floodlights within, and Ken grinned. He wasn’t all that good a driver either, due to the lack of being a car guy, and so he said a silent prayer of thanks for the certainty that today was not the day he died.
The gate came closer and he took the turn toward it at a screech, gunned the engine, and hit the horn. The soldiers didn’t move fast, but they were out of the way by the time he plowed into the gate and took it down.
The car shook off its remains and kept going.
“Good job, Nellie.” So what if he’d named Terry’s car? It was a good car. On Ken went, up the drive toward the lab, blowing through the wooden barrier at checkpoint two, honking the horn madly the whole time.
Sirens had started up almost immediately and people sprang into action, but they were amassing behind Ken. Not in front of him.
He drove around the side of the building to a sub-level entrance that Alice had seen in her visionary explorations, and screeched to a stop. Gloria burst through the door and stopped, holding it ajar.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Coming,” she said, propping something against the door to keep it open. “Right behind me, I hope! I’m headed down. Shouldn’t be long.”
As the first men with guns showed up, Ken hoped so, too.
6.
Brenner perked up when a person’s shadow approached his office door. An alarm echoed at a sanity-destroying volume throughout the building. It was about time she made it up here. “Why, Miss Ives, what a sur—” he started, but dropped off when he saw the new security officer instead. “What is it?”
“We, ah, have a situation, sir,” the man said, speaking loud to be heard over the alarm.
“Which is…” Brenner got up, taking his jacket off the arm of his chair and putting it on.
“We’ve got a fire alarm and a threat outside the building.”
Ken had come after all.
“Shut down the alarm, neutralize the threat.”
“He’s a civilian, sir,” the guard continued. “But the most worrisome thing is Miss Ives—she was on her way to your office, like you said she would be, but she, ah, saw something. She saw something and stopped. She’s in Alice Johnson’s room. I—you better come. She’s upset. It’s, ah, Dr. Parks is upset, too. And subject Eight.”
Brenner had been prepared to gloat at how they’d known and foiled Terry’s plans. He wanted her upset, but he didn’t want her in Alice Johnson’s room. Something had gone very wrong indeed for her to abandon her plan.
He followed the security officer.
There was nothing Brenner hated more than surprises.
Nothing except losing.
7.
Terry took a step closer to Alice, holding off Dr. Parks. Alice was slumped on the floor beside the electroshock machine in her exam room. Not moving. Not breathing.
Kali cried beside her, as she had every time Terry had seen her do an illusion. “She’s not moving!” the child wailed, and Terry watched as she wiped a stream of blood from one side of her nose. Her upset was real, but so far, her illusion was simple and it held. Good girl.
“Alice,” Terry said. “No, not Alice!”
Electrodes were still fixed to Alice’s temples where she lay, the dial on the machine cranked way up…Terry had changed back into her street clothes, which had allowed her to stash a kitchen knife she’d smuggled in from home in her pocket. She would wait until it was needed.
Terry had figured the illusion had to be significant, but nothing that Brenner would see coming. Or that would be so big he’d realize they intended to fool him. He didn’t believe that Kali was capable of control, but Terry knew that no one understood their capabilities until they had to. Especially not a child. It was a small thing for her, so much smaller than the flames. But it wouldn’t last forever.
Alice had to disappear. If this worked, she would. Because Brenner would believe she was dead…until he didn’t need to anymore.
This had to work. Terry knew he’d never let any of them go otherwise.
“You have to let us take care of her,” Dr. Parks said.
“I said leave her alone,” Terry commanded. She stood over Alice and gently brushed her hair behind her ear. The illusion maintained. “She’s dead.”
When she caught Kali’s eye, the girl sobbed harder. By all appearances, genuine. Oh, Kali, I’ll come back for you.
If Terry hadn’t known that what she was seeing was fake, she’d have gone out of her mind. When she’d passed Alice’s room, then doubled back, the view was tragic. Dr. Parks was crying, too, and trying to pry Kali away from Alice’s form.
“What is this?” Dr. Brenner said as he walked in, but even he stopped short.
“She changed the setting on the machine,” Dr. Parks said quietly. “It was too much.”
“You did this!” Terry stood and leveled a finger at Dr. Brenner, and put every accusation she had against him into her voice. “You’re the reason Alice is dead. You killed her.”
“Calm down,” Brenner said. “Maybe she can be revived.”
He didn’t believe it. She could tell.
“She’s dead! She’s not coming back, and—and we’re not staying here. We’re not doing this anymore.”
Alice stayed where she was, playing dead and limp.
“Why?” Dr. Brenner asked. “Why not just have a nice sedative?”
“I planned to take files from your office, but I think Alice”—she choked on a sob—“is all I need to make sure you never hurt my child or my friends again. I’ll talk to her family. They’ll keep it quiet, as long as you leave us all be. You can try to keep us here, but we’ll know the truth. I won’t rest until I escape this place—and I will make sure the world knows you killed her, knows everything you’ve done here. We’ll make sure of it.”
“Terry, be careful. Think of your child.”
“I am.” Terry removed the knife from her pocket and showed it to him, gleaming and silver. “Now, I’m leaving here with Gloria and Ken and you are not going to follow. You killed Alice. And if you don’t want everyone to know, you will stay where you are and let us go. You know I’m stubborn. You also know you can’t risk hurting my child. If anyone lays a hand on me, I’ll use this…” She waved the knife. “On myself if I have to.”
Brenner stood uncertainly and blood roared through Terry’s head. What did they do if he wouldn’t let them go? What then?
“I loved Alice. Let them go, Papa,” Kali said through sobs.
Terry hadn’t expected that, but she’d take it. “Get out of my way,” she ordered.
Brenner still didn’t move. “It’s too bad about her,” he said, nodding to Alice. “Such lost potential is always sad. There’s so little of it in the world. We may still learn from her yet.”
The two of them were at a standoff. Terry facing-down Brenner. Him standing his ground.
What did she do if he refused?
“We’re going,” Terry said. His words made her feel sick, but what they implied was exactly what they’d planned for.
“Fine,” he said, and then he stepped aside. “Don’t hurt the child.”
Terry didn’t wait for a change of mind. She stumbled past him gripping the knife handle, expecting at any moment he’d reach out and grab her.
But he didn’t.
“Let her go!” he called to the officers in the hall, who backed away instantly. “Tell everyone to let them go.”
Gloria met her halfway up the hall dressed in orderly scrubs and with longer than usual hair.
“Did it work?” Gloria asked.
“It’s working,” Terry said. “Kali did a good job. Ken ready?”
“Like the cavalry,” Gloria said. “Be right back.”
Terry didn’t turn around to see Gloria go ahead for the last phase of the plan.
8.
Gloria had hidden a gurney up the hall from Alice’s room, and she retrieved it now. She’d even brought a wig from her mother’s special occasion closet to better disguise herself. She needn’t have worried.
Dr. Parks was in tears, and Dr. Brenner was already gone. Kali too. Gloria didn’t have much time.
Motionless on the floor, Alice looked…dead.
“Ma’am,” Gloria said, lowering her voice’s register, “I’m here to take the body to the morgue for dissection.”
The word “dissection” made her want to throw up.
Dr. Parks waved a hand for her to do what she must.
Gloria had trouble heaving Alice up, so it was a good thing Parks was distracted. Corpses didn’t usually help get themselves onto gurneys. Gloria pulled a sheet over Alice and rolled the gurney into the hallway…
Where she immediately sped up. “Hang on,” Gloria said.
She saw Alice’s fingers grip the sides of the table under the sheet. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Out of this place.”
“Sounds good to me,” Alice said.
Just as they’d planned, Ken had backed the car up to the entrance. Terry had left the door propped wide open.
“Stay down,” Gloria said, pushing the gurney toward the door. “Okay, now you can get up. The car hood will hide you. Get in the trunk.”
“The trunk?” Alice said, slipping off and to her feet in a crouch.
“It’s not for long.”
Alice sighed and did as she’d been told. Gloria shut the hood and climbed into the back. Ken and Terry were playing up their distraught reactions to Alice’s supposed death.
Security officers had made a perimeter, but they were staying back. Ken gunned the motor and she heard someone calling, “He said let them leave! No one shoot!”
“We ready?” Ken asked from behind the wheel.
“We are ready,” Terry said. And, as he gunned the motor, she said, “Bye, Hawkins. If we’re lucky, see you never!”
Except when I come back for Kali.
Terry had no intention of allowing Brenner to keep on with his monstrous work, but first she had to get Alice to safety. She had to see baby Jane into the world.
Plan “Fake Alice’s Death and Bluff Our Way Out” had worked.
9.
They didn’t slow down until they’d left Hawkins far in the rearview mirror. They stopped off at Unionville’s Greyhound station, a little outside Bloomington, not far from Larrabee. After they’d released Alice from the trunk, Ken handed her the bus ticket he’d bought earlier.
“I can’t believe you got me out of there.” Alice shook her head in wide-eyed wonder.
“Me either.” Gloria mimed wiping her brow.
Alice’s eyes got watery. “I’m going to miss you guys.”
Terry couldn’t go down that road right now or she’d cry, too. “No tears, we did it. This is only until I can expose what he’s doing there. In the meantime, you’ll be safe. Do we need to check in with your folks?”
Alice said, “My cousins will call them once I make it. I’ve come up with a code for them to use.”
Alice would’ve made a great spy.
“Good.” Terry nodded to Ken. “Suitcase.”
He went back to the car and dragged out Terry’s big suitcase from the back seat. Gloria’d been wedged in beside it. Terry had packed it with the contents of the Disappearing Boxes, and left out a dress for Alice to change into. They were roughly the same size, so everything should fit. She pulled out the dress, in a see-through dry-cleaning bag. “Go change into this—no one will recognize you.”
“I wish you’d told me we were updating her wardrobe,” Gloria said.
Alice stuck her tongue out, but went into the depot.
“Do we really think he’ll leave us alone?” Gloria asked.
“Alice will be safe,” Ken said.
“Then that’s enough for tonight,” Terry said. Though she caught Ken’s frown. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure…”
“Then keep it to yourself.” Vague psychic pronouncements would not help Terry’s state of mind. Standing opposite Brenner, she’d been very aware that this could’ve ended another way.
“Probably best.” Ken shrugged.
Alice came out of the station with her coveralls over her arm, and ducked her head almost shyly. She had on a flowered dress, one of Terry’s—and Andrew’s—favorites, that stopped a few inches above the knee.
And her work boots.
“The shoes!” Terry said and reached into the trunk to find the pair of low black heels. “I almost forgot. You can carry your boots in the bag the dress came in.”
“You look great,” Gloria said.
Alice’s cheeks were flushed.
“From dead to dolled-up,” Terry said.
Alice took the shoes from Terry and walked over to the car to sit on the front passenger seat and change. “You don’t think I look silly? Like a little girl playing dress-up or something?”
“No,” Terry said, scoffing, “you’re beautiful.”
“I feel like Cinderella.”
“Good thing it’s nowhere close to midnight, then,” Ken said.
Terry hoped Alice did all right in Canada. It’s not forever. Hopefully.
There were hugs then and tearful farewells. The bus pulled into the station and it was time for the real goodbye. Terry walked Alice over to the bus with a lump in her throat. She carried the bag with Alice’s boots.
Alice lugged her suitcase and gave it to the porter to put under the bus. Alice watched him suspiciously and, after he finished, suggested they might want to adjust the bolt tightness on the door or it’d fall off at some point.
Terry waited a few feet from the bus door. “I guess this is it for now,” Terry said.
Alice hesitated, and Terry could see she was wrestling with herself.
“Out with it, Alice.”
“There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve seen happen to you. In the future. Gloria said I should give you a choice, to know or not.” Alice shifted on her heels. Her expression was completely somber. Whatever she’d seen, it wasn’t good.
“Tell me this—am I still fighting?” Terry asked. “Still trying to do what’s right?”
Alice answered immediately. “Yes.”
Good. “Then I don’t need to know.”
Alice started to protest, but Terry said, “I’ll let you know if I change my mind. Okay?”
This Alice accepted. “You’ll let me know immediately.”
“Okay.” And Terry folded her into a hug, and watched her friend board the bus. She would never ask anyone to tell her the future again. Maybe.
“All aboard!” Ken called to Gloria and Terry after the bus pulled out and Alice was on her way to Canada.
They piled back in the car. Terry was content to let Ken keep driving.
“I’m going to miss her,” Gloria said.
Ken and Terry spoke at the same time: “Me too.”
10.
Brenner couldn’t believe the Johnson girl had died before they could discover her secrets. And with that electroshock stunt she’d handed Terry Ives a way to make him look weak. Kali, upset, had gone straight to sleep, helped by the sedative he’d given her. But he would still win the day.
Dr. Parks would get over her fit of conscience. He’d given her the night off and a reminder of their confidentiality protocols. The body had apparently already been taken down to the morgue, so he assumed its secrets would be his.
Now he called Langley to get ahead of the news. “Director, I wanted to be the first to give you a heads-up on a situation we had here this evening,” Brenner said.
“I heard about some alarms,” the director said.
News traveled fast.
“False ones of a sort,” Brenner said. He related the details of Alice Johnson’s death—she’d increased the settings on an electroshock machine herself, triggering a heart attack—and told him that several of the other problem subjects had seen the body, and also set off the fire alarm and a gate code. The personnel were being debriefed and given a cover story about a drunk driver crashing through the fencing. By tomorrow, hardly anyone would know the truth, and soon enough everyone who did would forget it.
They had medications to help with that, if anyone had trouble.
“All in all, I say we’ve dodged a bullet,” Dr. Brenner said. “They’ll clean up our mess for us, for the illusion of being left alone. Let the girl’s family mourn. We won’t bother them. We’ll get what we can from the corpse, though the brain was fried by electricity.”
Let Terry Ives think she had the upper hand for a brief moment.
“But don’t we need the woman’s child?” the director asked.
“I have that well in hand.”
“See that you do.”
All the approval he needed for the next phase of the evening. It would have been easier to accomplish here, but there was a certain novelty to rearranging his plans to accommodate a disruption, to stepping out into a spotlight and still managing to remain invisible. He gathered his credentials, some hospital scrubs, a fake badge, and got in his car. He shook his head at the torn chain-link gate as he left, a cleanup crew already half done with the mess. There was only one hospital near Larrabee, and it was simple enough to guess that was where Terry would end up before the night was through. The injection should start producing effects soon, if it hadn’t already.
And so Brenner drove fast.
11.
Ken parked Terry’s car in the yard and she yawned, sleepy after the events of the evening. Ken’s car was parked in the Ives’ driveway. He and Gloria had driven over together.
“I’m wired,” Ken said. “I don’t know how you can be tired.”
“I’m with her.” Gloria raised her hand in the back. “I no longer have a single fantasy about how glamorous and exciting and easy the lives of comic-book heroes are.”
Terry laughed. “Do you guys want to come in?” A half-hearted invite she prayed they’d refuse, but would also be fine with if they said yes. In other words, real friendship. “There are still some brownies, I think.”
“It’s been a big night,” Gloria said. “And you need your baby sleep.”
“Baby sleep?” Terry asked.
“It’s like beauty sleep, but for healthy babies.”
“Ah.”
“You too, Ken?”
He stared off into space.
“Earth to Ken,” Terry said. “Is there something you need to tell me, or are you ready to call it a night?”
“There’s something, but I don’t know what it is.” He raised his hands. “Yes, I do know that’s annoying, you don’t have to tell me just because Alice is gone.”
“All right, I’m going in.” Terry accepted her keys from Ken, who patted her car’s hood and said, “Well done, Nellie.” She didn’t bother to ask what that meant.
She waved goodbye and let herself in the front door. She went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Or maybe milk. Were there brownies left?
She deserved one. The night had gone as planned. Alice was safe. They were safe. Brenner would leave them alone if he was smart, and she’d find a way to get the word out about what he was doing.
So…why did she feel like darkness gathered at the edges of her vision?
Pain ripped through her entire body, centered at her waist. Water ran down her thighs.
She grabbed the counter. “Oh,” she said. The baby. She screamed, “Becky, she’s coming!”
A door slammed above and Becky ran down the stairs. “What—your water broke!” She paused. “She’s early.”
“We have to go. Hospital.” Terry felt woozy. “Now.”
Becky asked about the damage to the front of Terry’s car, and Terry had no explanation. “Just drive,” she said.
“It’s going to be all right,” Becky said. “They do a good job at this place.”
But they both knew it was the same hospital where their parents died.
“Faster,” Terry said. Every contraction rattled her bones like lightning. Pain. Such pain. “Get there.”
To her credit, Becky did go faster. She slammed on the brakes when they got to the ER drive-up, tossing on the hazards and helping Terry out.
Terry barely knew where she was, she was in such pain. “She’s in labor!” Becky shouted.
“Help me,” Terry said. “Save my baby.”
Baby Jane has to be okay. Hang in there, baby Jane.
Nurses and doctors swamped Terry, and steered her onto a gurney. They rushed her into the building, Becky jogging alongside and then disappearing. An IV drip was inserted in her arm and they said something about pain medicine. The sight of the monitor with the line of her heart spiking and down, spiking and down, was so familiar that for a moment she thought she might be back in the Hawkins lab.
“This baby’s coming,” someone shouted. A team of people was around her, and the scene dissolved into scrubs and masks, beeps and the clatter of surgeon’s tools on a steel tray, the smell of disinfectant…Terry hung on to consciousness for dear life. Every contraction was a knife to the gut and she prayed for baby Jane and accepted the pain…
“One more push,” a voice near her said, face behind a mask, and so she did. She pushed for all she was worth. There was a blaze of light in her vision and then she heard it—the most beautiful sound in heaven or on earth.
Jane squalled like a battle cry, ready to tell the world what she thought of it. Jane was here. She’s here.
Someone was handing a man in scrubs her baby. She knew his eyes, those blue eyes. She had to stop him.
That’s my girl. Consciousness slipped through her grasp. That’s my girl.
Becky was sitting beside her hospital bed when she came to.
“Where is she?” Terry demanded, fighting her way to a sitting position. “Where’s Jane?”
The stillness in Becky before she answered spoke volumes. “I’m so sorry, Terry. There were complications and they weren’t able to save her…”
“No, I heard her.” Terry fought the IV out of her arm and wrestled Becky to get to her feet. “You don’t understand. I saw him. He took her. He took Jane!”
“Terry, no. There’s no baby. You have to listen to me.”
But no one would listen to Terry.
Her baby was alive. Alive.
And she would find a way to prove it.