“When we used to have a national parks program they would give tours through these caves,” Dusa told her that same evening as they wiped the plates from dinner clean with dry cloths; those charged with washing them with water wanted to use as little of it as possible. “Now these caves are all ours. The Adirondacks were becoming too well known as resistance central. After last summer’s raids we knew it wasn’t safe up there anymore. A bunch of Drakians discovered that these caves were unused and made this our new headquarters about three months ago.”

Kayla remembered the news article Nedra Harris had written suggesting that the Drakians had relocated away from the Adirondack Mountains. Kayla wondered if all the groups were dispersing across the country. It might be a good thing to spread the resistance rather than have it all in one spot.

“Take a look around,” Dusa went on. “The stalactites and stalagmites are pretty amazing. I’d show you myself, but right now I have to go over these files with Jack that I brought in.”

“Jack?” Kayla asked.

Dusa nodded at the guy who had helped Kayla into the cave. He stood talking seriously with Nate and Francis just inside the entrance. All through dinner Kayla had tried to refrain from stealing glances at him, but she found it difficult. Aside from his good looks, there was something she found compelling in the athletic, confident way he carried himself.

“He’s the technology genius who converts these dead-person files into fake bar codes for us. He’s so good with computer algorithms that he didn’t even bother with college. He was writing incredibly advanced computer code from the time he was eleven. College wouldn’t have taught him anything.”

“Where’s he from?” Kayla asked.

“Belfast, I think.”

“He’s not exactly a computer geek,” Kayla commented with an appreciative grin.

Dusa laughed. “No. Not at all.”

Dusa went to talk to Jack, and Kayla walked into the cave, enjoying the increasing coolness. She passed rows of sleeping bags, camping lanterns, and coolers on the rock floor. At one spot, ten computer-chip storage boxes were lined up side by side. She wandered deeper into the cave. Squeezing through a narrow rock pass, she came to a high, wide cavern. Columns of stone formed as towering stalagmites jutting from the cavern floor met massive stalactites dropping from its ceiling.

The space was silent, cool, and incredible. Mfumbe would have been fascinated by it. Kayla wished he was there to see it.

It was funny how often she’d wanted to share something with him. Look at that mountain. Isn’t that sunset incredible? Nothing seemed as good, or even entirely real, because he wasn’t there to share it with her.

What was Mfumbe doing now? Was he still at his parents’ home? Was he getting better? In the cool stillness, she closed her eyes and attempted to focus her mind on contacting him. It wasn’t words that she hoped to project — at least not at first — but her image and her concern.

She made her mind a blank by focusing on nothing but the sound of her breathing. Slowly in. Even more slowly out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Over and over — until she felt the field of her own energy lift above her body. The walls of the cave no longer contained her, just as her own body could not hold her any longer. She was out on the psychic plane, calling for Mfumbe to contact her.

Then, abruptly, she was back in the cave — back in her body, more aware than ever of its limitations, of pain in her limbs, in her bones, in her skull.

An agonizing burn under her ribs made her clench her fist and ram it into her left side. A debilitating weakness forced her to sit.

Was this what Mfumbe was feeling?

Had she in fact contacted him and taken on his suffering?

An image came to her, spreading behind her clenched-shut eyes. He was in his bedroom, tossing among tangled sheets and blankets. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his eyes were dull in a kind of waking trance. She sensed that he was making a tremendous effort to get out of bed, but something was keeping him from doing it.

Kayla. Too many drugs. Can’t think. Where are you? Need to think.

It was as if she could feel the hot slickness of his sweat-soaked skin. She felt the hoarseness in his throat, as though some constriction was stopping him from speaking — and was also now stopping her from breathing.

Don’t call or contact in any way. More words came to her, delivered haltingly and with great effort. Someone is watching here; they’re watching for you. Not safe.

There was so much she wanted to talk to him about. Maybe she counted on him too much, but he was smart and she trusted his judgment. Who did he think Kara might be? What of their shared visions? Why was someone looking for her? Was it as Kara thought, because they could see the future? What did he think she should do next?

All this had to go unsaid and unasked. He was too weak to handle it and she was, too. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand this.

I’m still with Dusa. I’m okay. You’re hurting, she struggled to tell him. She attempted to project her location to him, thinking of the desert she’d seen so that he might see it.

“Are you all right?” another voice asked.

Startled, Kayla whirled toward the voice, her connection to Mfumbe abruptly snapped.

Gasping great mouthfuls of air, she stumbled back against the cave wall.

Jack had come up behind her noiselessly — or maybe she’d just been too involved with Mfumbe to notice.

“You were somewhere else,” Jack said, having observed her trance state. “Someplace pretty banged out. Where’d you go?”

The open, genuine concern in his expression made her want to respond the same way. As the hammering of her heart slowed and the pain subsided, she felt strong enough once again. He sat beside her, listening intently as she told him about how she had learned to communicate telepathically with Mfumbe and others who had gone into hiding in the Adirondacks. She explained how she’d studied with Eutonah, learning to use her mind at a heightened level. “Does it sound too unbelievable to you?” she asked, afraid he might think she was strange or even making it up.

“Why should it? It’s like ants,” Jack replied.

“Ants?” she questioned.

“Or bees with a hive mind,” he went on. “It’s called hive mentality when an individual is part of a collective consciousness. It’s just another kind of communication, if you think about it. Lots of insects communicate with chemical signals. Ants leave chemical trails that are a kind of collective map. Speech is really a very superficial, limited form of communication. A direct mental link — a psychic connection — gives insight into the mental imagery of the sender.”

“I don’t know. Is it the same thing? I’m not sure,” Kayla admitted. “My teacher, Eutonah, always said that we could tap into a deeper consciousness that was all around us. We did a lot of work with her on it.”

“Are there a lot of you psychics now?” he questioned.

Kayla nodded. “Hundreds, I’d guess. Didn’t you meet them when you were in the Adirondacks?”

“I was never there. I came on board when the movement started coming west. The Drakians who were in the mountains mostly kept to themselves. They kind of shunned everyone else as being too passive.”

“A lot of us were working on our mental powers. I don’t think that’s passive,” Kayla countered, feeling irritation at the criticism.

He began to pace, as if seized with a sudden idea that was making him restless. “No, it’s not. It might even be the key.”

“The key to what?”

“Gene Drake was onto something, and we’ve got to find out what it is.” His vivid blue eyes brightened with an intense gleam as he warmed to the subject.

“Something worse than our genetics being encoded in the tattoo?” Kayla asked, as though that weren’t bad enough. “Yes, worse!” he answered. “And it was in that computer that he gained access to, but he was shot before he could tell anyone.”

“He never told Nate or Francis?”

“They say no,” he replied. “And the guy who gave him the passwords killed himself the same night Gene was shot.”

“How do you know who he was?”

“Nate knew him slightly. He was a brainy computer professor from Caltech. Maybe he was stressed out about Gene or afraid Gene would turn him in.”

“Maybe it wasn’t really suicide,” Kayla suggested.

“That’s possible,” Jack agreed. “But whatever the reason he killed himself, he’s the only person we know of who was able to hack into the Global-1 bar code file.”

“Dusa told me you’re a genius hacker. No luck?”

“I get way into the system, and time after time I hit a block. I’ve configured and reconfigured the computer algorithms every way I can think of and — no go.”

“How could psychics help?” Kayla asked.

“Somebody has to know how to get into that file,” he said. “Somewhere on earth, someone has access to that information. Someone who can read minds might be able to discover it.”

“We don’t exactly read minds,” she said.

“Okay, no offense, but you somehow link up mentally, right?”

“Right. But a psychic would have to know who to link up with,” she explained. “Any idea who would know the formula?”

“None,” he said dismally.

“Maybe somehow we’ll find out who it is. Then my psychic strengths or someone else’s will be useful. It’s stellar to think that all the work we’ve done on our psychic abilities might really put these G-1 creeps out of business. Then you’d appreciate how important mind strengthening is.”

“We work on strengthening the mind here, too. It’s very important to us,” Jack said. “This is a major struggle we’re involved in. We have to be unafraid — physically and mentally strong for it.”

Kayla’s curiosity was piqued. “How do you work on it? Telepathy?”

“Come on outside and you’ll see.” He put his hand on her shoulder, guiding her back through the narrow opening.

The cave was empty but she heard voices coming from the front. Something orange-red was aglow on the desert floor. She turned to him, questions in her eyes.

“Are you ready for your first fire walk?” he asked.