“These days they just label us as delusional and try to medicate us or confine us to a locked ward in a psychiatric hospital.” Catalina sighed. “Which is why my parents drilled into me the importance of acting normal.”
“I got the same lectures,” Slater said. “Something in common, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
Catalina stopped at the open door of the vault and looked inside. The space was not large, about the size of a walk-in closet. It was lined with glass. Most of the shelves, which were constructed of glass and steel, were empty. There were only a few artifacts left, including a vintage black telephone with an old-fashioned rotary dial, a plastic case full of small index cards, a desk lamp and some odds and ends that looked like they had been taken from an old lab.
“I wonder what the index cards were for?” she said.
Slater moved past her into the vault and raised the clear plastic lid of the case. He flicked through some of the cards.
“It’s a file of addresses and phone numbers,” he said. “In the era of the Bluestone Project all data was stored on paper. Uncle Lucas is going to love this.”
“Why would he want it? If that file is from the Bluestone Project, most of the people involved are either very old or dead by now.”
“Lucas is in charge of building a database of the descendants of anyone who might have been connected to Bluestone.”
Catalina made a face. “Does it strike you that your uncles might be a tad obsessive?”
“It’s often my first thought in the morning and usually my last at night. At the moment they are obsessed with the possibility that the Vortex lab was real and so were the weapons it created.”
“Do you really believe psychic energy can be weaponized?” Catalina asked.
“Over the years the Foundation has come across a few devices that appear to have been designed as weapons, but no one has been able to operate them, let alone actually fire them.”
“Why?”
“The theory is that in order to be activated, a paranormal gun would probably have to be tuned to the user’s personal vibe. That’s a technical hurdle that hasn’t ever been solved, at least as far as we know. Still, the rumors of a lab that succeeded in creating some prototype weapons have never stopped circulating.”
Catalina sniffed. “Neither have the rumors about the dead extraterrestrials in the freezers at Area Fifty-One. Everyone knows those sorts of stories are strictly conspiracy theory junk.”
Slater picked up the vintage telephone. “Sort of like the stories about the residents of a certain small mountain community having extrasensory perception because a few generations back their ancestors were subjected to some unknown gases released in a mysterious explosion?”
Catalina sighed. “That doesn’t qualify as a conspiracy theory.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s true.”
She watched him lift the telephone receiver and put it to his ear. Experimentally he used a finger to turn the rotary dial in a full circle.
“Is it hot?” she asked.
“No more so than other office equipment that has been housed in a paranormal environment,” he said. “But I love these old phones. As handheld communications devices they absorbed some really interesting energy. I’ve never come across one quite like this, though.”
“Why? What’s different about it?”
Slater examined the base of the instrument. “No label, brand or serial number. Also, it feels a little too heavy for a vintage phone. It’s probably from the Fogg Lake caves, because artifacts from that facility were the main focus of Royston’s collection. That makes me curious.”
“I wonder why the raiders didn’t take it.”
“It doesn’t have the kind of heat that appeals to raiders—or to the Foundation curators, for that matter,” Slater said. He hesitated. “But evidently Royston considered it important enough to store in his vault.”
Catalina stepped through the doorway of the big vault. “Wow. There is a lot of hot energy in here, isn’t there? Oh, shit.”
She jumped back, jolted by the currents of violent heat that she had just stepped into. Her pulse kicked up. Frissons of ice and fire arced across the back of her neck. A ghostly vision began to coalesce.
She retreated a few more steps, putting a little space between herself and the pool of energy.
“What did you pick up?” Slater asked.
She took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. “You were right. Someone died in here, and he was not alone. The killer was here, too.”
Slater watched her very intently. “No blood was found at the scene. There was no evidence of blunt force trauma. Cause of death was heart attack.”
“Let me take a look.”
Catalina wrapped her arms very tightly under her breasts and made herself move back into the seething currents. Cautiously she heightened her talent.
Once again the vision began to take shape, fading in and out, never quite coming into sharp focus. She tried to describe what she was seeing, vaguely aware that her voice took on an eerie, otherworldly note. She could not help it. She was, after all, trying to communicate from somewhere deep inside a nightmare.
“The victim is standing here where I’m standing now,” she said in her dream voice. “He is not alone. There was another person. The victim is startled by something … A sharp pain. He is not frightened, not at first. Then he realizes that something terrible is happening to him. He can’t breathe. His heart is beating too fast, pounding. He knows that he is dying. Fear. Rage. Panic.”
The terrible energy left by the victim’s mounting horror was a palpable force sending waves of violent dread through her, threatening to shatter her own senses. She fought for control, struggling to overcome the urge to run for her life; to hide.
Strong hands closed around her shoulders, hauling her out of the pool of death energy.
“It’s all right, Catalina.” Slater’s voice shattered the vision. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, enveloping her with his aura. “I’ve got you. It’s over. Done. You’re safe.”
She shut down her other senses and found herself once again in the world that most people defined as real. Her normal senses took charge. That was when she realized Slater was still holding her. She could not resist the temptation to burrow deeper into the warmth and energy of his embrace. Just a few seconds, she promised herself. Just long enough for me to catch my breath.
It had been a very long time since anyone had comforted her after a vision.
She was pretty sure the last time had been when her mother had come into her bedroom to calm her after she had begun to experience the nightmares that had heralded the onset of her talent. The era of parental sympathy and concern had not lasted long. Once the true nature of her new senses had become apparent, her mother and father had immediately begun to emphasize the necessity of gaining control over her strange new ability. You’ve got to learn to handle the visions or you’ll never be able to live a normal life in the outside world.
She knew they had meant well and that their insistence on control was for her own good. Nevertheless, neither of them could see the things that she saw. They could not comprehend how disturbing the dreamlike visions were. They imagined them to be waking dreams but the truth was that they were so much worse because, in a sense, the visions were all too real.