Progenitor Read online

  “How are you going to transport him in that condition?” Annaliese asked. “If he’s restrained because he’s been hurting people and throwing things -“she trailed off, looking at her mother. “Has he been hostile before?”

  Tabitha shrugged. “He’d get belligerent when his confusion was bad, but he was more argumentative then than anything else. He never raised a hand to anyone.”

  “There was another young woman here with you the past couple of days. Where is she?”

  “Kalea is at church,” Tabitha said.

  “Can you call her and ask her to come here?” Dr. Mercer asked.

  “Why?”

  He paused. “If you recall, he was resistant to the transfer until she spoke to him, when she actually sat down next to him. I thought that if she came here, it might help him to settle.”

  “How can that help?” Tabitha asked.

  Annaliese perked up. “That’s true. Her presence seemed to soothe him.”

  “And she was here when he recovered,” Dr. Mercer added. “Maybe he associates her with getting better. Do you think there’s any way she could come by, just long enough for us to transfer him? The psychiatric hospital is less than half a mile up the road.”

  Annaliese pulled out her cell phone. “Let’s see if she can work her magic again.”

  Chapter 14

  “I want to go home!” Carson screamed.

  “Honey please, we’re trying to help you,” Tabitha said, trying to pat him on the shoulder. “We talked about this yesterday. Don’t you want to get better?”

  “I’ll be better at home where I belong!” he growled.

  “Dad, you promised that you would go to this new place so we can figure out why you got sick again. Don’t you want answers?”

  “I already know the answers. It’s the rest of you that don’t understand!” He thrashed against the restraints. Tabitha choked back a sob and ran from the room, leaving Annaliese standing next to the nurse, staring at Carson in wonder.

  “When did you say this started?” Annaliese asked.

  The nurse pecked at her computer. “The night shift nurse said his bed alarm went off at three thirty-three this morning. He threw his bedpan at her.”

  Annaliese’s face scrunched. “Dr. Mercer didn’t mention that.”

  “It was full. That’s why you smell cleaner in here. It took two people nearly an hour to clean up the mess he made once he threw everything but himself and the bed out of this room.”

  Annaliese sighed and rubbed her head again. “What was he saying?”

  “I said I want to get out of this prison and go home!” Carson screamed. “It’s a lie! I’m not dying, you are! You’ll all be dead if you don’t let me out of here and listen to me!”

  “Stuff like that,” the nurse said.

  “You said you tried to sedate him, but it didn’t work?”

  “Your mother gave us permission over the telephone to give him a double dose of sedatives at five o’clock this morning, but as you can see, it didn’t work.”

  “I see that,” Annaliese’s eyes widened as Carson started chewing the pillow. “Dad, what are you doing?”

  “I’ll get out of here if I have to eat my way out!”

  “Now he reminds me of the parakeet Kalea had when we were kids,” Annaliese put her hands on her hips. “Petesy could eat his way through anything.”

  “Parakeets are cuter doing it than humans,” the nurse grumbled.

  “I appreciate your patience with him.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” the nurse said.

  “Really?” Annaliese said.

  The nurse looked at her seriously. “No, this is one for the books. I was trying to be nice.”

  Annaliese sighed. “What other medications was he given?”

  The nurse consulted her computer again and shook her head. “Everything routine.”

  “What about antipsychotics?” Annaliese asked.

  “He hasn’t been diagnosed with a mental disorder, so we can’t do that unless we get a psychiatric evaluation,” the nurse said. “Besides, it’s dangerous with dementia. It can accelerate the deterioration process.”

  “I forgot about that,” Annaliese said.

  “How can you forget about me?” Carson asked. “Please, Annaliese, I’m your father. You’re a doctor. You can tell them to let me out of here.”

  “Dad, you’ve had a bad night, and we’re afraid that means something bad has happened inside of you. They’re getting you ready to go to a different hospital where they can figure out what’s happened to you.”

  “The psychiatric hospital,” he laughed. “They won’t find anything because I’m not crazy! She just said that!”

  “I said you weren’t diagnosed, not that nothing is wrong,” the nurse said. “Clearly, something has gone wrong in the past few hours. Don’t you want to know what, and why?”

  “I told you that nothing is wrong! I’m fine! Nobody knows my mind better than I do!”

  “That doesn’t stop everybody from assuming that they do,” Kalea said, walking in the room and kneeling beside Carson’s bed. “Uncle Carson, they called me while I was in church. What happened?”

  Carson stared at Kalea, his eyes softening. “You’re here. You’ll save me!”

  “They think I need saving myself, remember? They want me to see a doctor at the same place where you’re going. In fact, I have an appointment to talk to someone there tomorrow morning before work. I planned to visit you once my appointment is done, but I can’t do that if you won’t go. I thought we agreed. Why won’t you go?”

  “Kalea, they think we’re crazy! They want to put us on pills and stop what’s coming. But they can’t. It’s too late and there’s too much at stake. You know that!”

  Kalea paused, studying her uncle. “I do, but we can’t tell them, Uncle Carson. Not yet.”

  His eyes watered. “Why not?”

  “They aren’t ready.”

  “All I want to do is help! I want to save us all!”

  Kalea patted his hand. “That’s all both of us want, but we can’t rush this. It has to be done in the right way, and in the right timing. We’re preparing now. It’s taking longer than we expected, but it’s still happening. Don’t lose hope.”

  “Hope is the thing with feathers, but they said I don’t have feathers.” A tear ran down Carson’s cheek.

  Kalea gently wiped the tear away and lifted a necklace with two rhinestone parrots glittering in the overhead light. “I can fly for you. Let me take over. Let go. It’s all right. I’ll finish it. I’ll save them.”

  Carson smiled. “You have grown into a big, strong girl.”

  “Yes I have, and I get stronger every day.” She stood. “Let them take you. They can’t hurt you. It will make the rest of the way easier. Just go, and let go. There’s nothing more for you to do, so rest.”

  He nodded as the orderlies rolled the bed out of the room.

  Annaliese breathed a sigh of relief and patted Kalea on the back. “Thanks for coming. That was well played.”

  “Yes,” Kalea’s eyes glinted silver, “well played indeed.”

  Chapter 15

  “Hello?”

  “Hi baby, it’s me. How are things on the family estate?”

  Annaliese laid down her computer and leaned back in the recliner. “Unbelievable. I guess you got my text this morning?”

  “I did,” Kieran said. “I’m sorry I’m just now getting back to you. I’ve been stuck at the office all day.”

  “Typical Monday?”

  “Absolutely,” Kieran paused. “I’m sorry about Pop. Is there any word from the psychiatric hospital?”

  “Kalea came to the hospital right before they transferred him, and he seemed to settle down. They said he hasn’t had any more agitated episodes.”

  “That’s good.”

  “But he’s been unconscious since Kalea left him yesterday. They think the sedatives finally kicked in.”

  “You don’t sound convin
ced.”

  “It doesn’t take seven and a half hours for a double dose of sedatives to work.”

  “I see,” Kieran said. “Another oddity in his case?”

  “I can’t make sense out of anything,” Annaliese said. “I went with Kalea for her appointment there this morning. Mentally, she’s as normal as a human being can be, despite our jokes to the contrary.”

  Kieran chuckled. “I told you she probably had more sense than the rest of us combined.”

  “The only thing they noticed is that her neurons seem to be firing faster. Not abnormally, but faster than they typically see in a healthy woman in her mid-thirties.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Annaliese shrugged, but the gesture was lost over the telephone. “Who knows? They want to keep an eye on that and the radiation from the scar on her foot. Her primary care physician has been monitoring it, but the hospital took another look at it while Dad was being transferred, and the level spiked.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “It wasn’t at alarming levels that could be a threat, but definitely more than normal. They scanned her again when she went to the psychiatrist this morning, and it was significantly reduced.” Annaliese sighed. “Besides those two things, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. But Dad,” she paused, “they think he’s progressed to stage six, or maybe stage seven. They have to wait for him to wake up to see how he’s functioning.”

  “And he’s been out for over twenty-four hours?”

  “He has. They shot him pretty full, but I’d think he would have regained some consciousness since late yesterday morning,” Annaliese said. “His case gets stranger every day.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Kieran said. “Do they have any idea what caused his regression?”

  “None. It’s the fastest progression they’ve ever seen. He reverted five stages in going on six weeks.” She paused again. “I’ve been online and on the phone tonight trying to track down more information the doctor at the hospital gave me. Most of it is dead ends with patient confidentiality, but I did manage to get some information on that young woman that came to see me last week.”

  “Sidney Sinclair?”

  “That’s her.”

  Kieran sighed. “I know you didn’t ask, but something about her felt off, so I had some of my friends look into that story she told you.”

  “What did you find? I could only get her patient files from when she was checked at the hospital after her father-in-law healed, and they’re sketchy. I’ve called her therapist, but Olivia hasn’t returned my call.”

  “Olivia probably doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” Kieran said. “Sidney Sinclair isn’t under a therapist. In fact, there was no conference in the D.C. area that she could have been possibly attending for medical assistants.”

  “Really?”

  “Even if there were, she shouldn’t have been there, because she was put on short-term disability three weeks ago.”

  Annaliese pulled herself up in the chair. “Why?”

  “They’re still looking into that. Like you said, medical records are harder to get into because of patient rights. Don’t worry. She’s collecting benefits, so I’ll find out.”

  “Thanks for looking into that,” Annaliese said. She was quiet for a moment. “She lied. I wonder why?”

  “Kalea’s situation is well-known, and it’s not hard to find out that the two of you are related. You’ve both been in the public eye even before all of this, between me, your practice, and her job. Maybe Sidney thought you learned something from Kalea that might help her. Didn’t she claim that she could see peoples’ injuries?”

  “That’s true,” Annaliese said, “and she was right about my foot and Jenna’s ear. If I had waited much longer to check into it, they wouldn’t have let me have the nanotech to fix it. And Jenna had early signs of an ear infection, but thankfully she caught it early and got it knocked out with antibiotics.” She paused. “Sidney lied, but she helped me too. That’s strange.”

  “Annaliese, you know it isn’t. Not in the world of politics. Sidney wants something from you, so she gave you something to earn your gratitude.”

  “What could she want from me?”

  “Information. That’s all you have to offer.”

  “About what?”

  “Who knows?” Kieran asked. “Who cares? Didn’t you send her back home?”

  “I did, but to a therapist that she obviously doesn’t have. I wasn’t planning to follow-up with Sidney, but now I wonder if I should call her.”

  “Why?”

  Annaliese smiled. “I owe her a favor. Maybe it would help to keep this ball rolling a little longer.”

  Kieran laughed. “Now you remember how the game works.”

  Chapter 16

  Avery stood and straightened his tie as Kieran glided through the restaurant followed by a stern secret service agent. Kieran shook Avery’s hand, laughed, and pulled Avery in a hug.

  “It’s good to see you!”

  “Thank you, Senator. It’s good to see you too,” Avery settled in his seat as Kieran motioned for his agent to take a seat at the table behind them.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Kieran? I don’t care if this is official business. We’re family, no matter what.”

  “I’m sorry,” Avery nodded to the agent behind Kieran, “I didn’t know.”

  Kieran turned to glance at the agent. “He’s harmless.”

  “Unless there’s a threat, sir,” the agent said.

  Kieran turned back to Avery. “Then he’s harmless.”

  Avery cleared his throat. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. There might be something harmful beyond our skies.”

  “I should have known the Space Exploration Society would pull the family string to get funding.”

  Avery smiled. “I think we’re facing something big. We really need the additional funding request to pass, and the sooner, the better.”

  “What’s going on?” Kieran put his napkin in his lap as the waiter sat their salads down. “I heard you stumbled on something unusual, but nobody will say what. It’s hard to defend a funding request without a reason, and your boss didn’t give me much when he came last week.”

  “I apologize for that, but he fears widespread panic, and didn’t want reporters getting this and throwing it all over the place.” Avery looked around, and then leaned forward. “Five weeks ago, we noticed radiation levels in the atmosphere rising. Nothing startling, except there hasn’t been any corresponding solar or interstellar activity to explain it. We wondered if it had to do with the magnetosphere, a reversal or something, but it’s stable, so that’s out.” He pulled his computer from the case under his chair. “May I show you a few things?”

  “Of course, that’s why I’m here.”

  Avery tapped his computer. “At first we thought that it was nothing. Radiation levels rise and fall all the time, and it’s of no consequence. The only thing is, they’ve been increasing each week since we initially picked it up.” He put the computer on the table and turned it so they could both see it, flipping through infrared images of the Earth. “Again, it’s not much, but it’s something.” He tapped the screen. “Two weeks ago, we picked up strange signals pinging the satellites in orbit.”

  “Pinging?”

  “Bouncing off them. Think of it this way: if you throw a rubber ball at a wall in an empty room, it will bounce off every wall in the room.”

  “What were these signals?” Kieran asked.

  “At first we couldn’t tell. We went through our entire database and even brought in linguists experts to see if it correlated with any language, but came up with nothing. It’s strange, because the frequency of these signals isn’t random. It was increasing, and becoming more stable. The waves are there all the time now, like a force surrounding Earth.” Avery swiped his finger on the screen, bringing up more graphics showing the waves surrounding Earth’s orbit.

  Kieran squin
ted at the computer. “Increasing radiation and now these waves, and both are building? Are they connected?”

  Avery shrugged. “They’re definitely linked.” He swiped the screen again, showing a broader image of Earth. “The energy levels surrounding and penetrating the planet have increased over the past forty-five days. It doesn’t correlate with seasonal shifts, solar activity, or any interstellar event in the solar system. In fact, there haven’t been any interstellar events during that time, except for this. Two meteoroids that we were watching deflected off our orbit right where these fields appeared, even though they should have passed well within our atmosphere.”

  “Then it can’t be all bad.”

  “We aren’t sure what it is,” Avery said. “Maybe it’s not bad, but maybe it’s not good, either. Increasing radiation is a threat to the planet, and these waves are interfering with our satellites. Most people haven’t noticed it yet, but transmission times are slightly slower than standard.”

  Kieran rubbed his head. “I see your point. Everything’s tied into those satellite systems: our electric grids, our communications -“

  “And the nanotech,” Avery broke in.

  “And the nanotech.” Kieran rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Do you need the funding to figure out what this is, and how to deal with it?”

  “We might know what it is. We broadened our search and finally did find a match for the waves surrounding our orbit.” He tapped the computer again, bringing up the picture of the waves surrounding Earth on the left and a picture of matching waves on the right. “The wavelengths pinging our satellites are a perfect match with human brainwaves.”

  Kieran raised an eyebrow. “Human brainwaves?”

  Avery nodded. “Beta waves right now, but they’ve shown signs of shifting to alpha waves in the past week.” He took the computer off the table and slipped it back in his briefcase. “Do you understand why we need that funding now?”

  Kieran nodded. “Our satellites are thinking.”

  Avery mimicked the nod. “And they have direct access to us, and everything we use on a day-to-day basis.”